A perfectly clear, 68 degree L.A. winter day presented itself for the General at UCLA Law School last Monday (1/22/07). I arrived early and was politely ushered to the taped off Media section in the first few rows of the lecture hall. A young writer for the L.A.Times plopped down to my right— Francisco Vara-Orta; long, straight black hair, note book and pen poised for action.
The UCLA Media Relations representative, Claudia Luther, graciously asked if we needed anything— I imagined for a brief moment that I was the ‘legitimate press’. (Should I ask for lunch?) Being this was a lecture on legitimacy, I decided to blend in and act legitimate.
Crack your notebooks students. The General is on campus to deliver a lesson well worth learning. There will be a pop quiz afterwards...
Francisco, who loves his job at the Times, told me he had never heard Wes speak before and was looking forward to it. I informed him that he was a dynamic speaker— the likes of which you seldom see in the political arena, and he replied,
"Yeah, I guess he has his performance down."
"No, not really," I clarified. "It’s not about performance with General Clark. It’s from the heart. It’s authentic, it’s love of country, the country he’s spent a lifetime defending... You’ll see what I mean. It’s not the rehearsed sound bites and gestures we’re used to getting from other political performers."
He seemed open to the idea of such an anomaly. Because he enjoys writing on the topic of education, he said he planned to pen this piece within that framework, but added;
"If he announces.... I guess that would change the whole thing."
Oh yes, it certainly would...
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5 minutes to show time and the room filled with a remarkably diverse crowd. Every race, every age, from teens in jeans to gray haired seniors. Soldiers in camouflage, others in crisp uniforms, men in suits & ties, mothers, be-sweatered educators, professors, Deans, delegates, and Clarkies. I’d venture around 150-200+ in the main room and 30 or so in the spill over room.
I spotted Wes near the entry- meeting, greeting. He strode over to us in the front, warmly extended his hand to me, smiling broadly, and said, "Hi! Nice to see you again"— (Gulp). I introduced him to Francisco, pointing out emphatically that the L.A. TIMES was in the house, and Wes said, "Well, good to meet you— but this is NOT a political event you know." And he was whisked off.
So much for an announcement today...
Dean Mike Schill does the introduction, intending to ‘keep it short’, but the General has such a weighty and extensive resume, it’s impossible to keep it "short". As the Dean was rattling off the litany of awards, honors, books & accomplishments, Wes was economizing his time just offstage, scrolling through his Blackberry. Suddenly the Senior Fellow of the Burkle Center for International Relations, the former four star, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, former Presidential candidate, Wes Clark, takes the stage to warm applause.
And doesn’t miss a beat...
"Now someone asked me when I was coming up here today was I going to announce for President. (laughter) The answer is "no"! I haven’t ruled out something like that... but I’m not here today in a political purpose. If you want to see the latest —go to my website, http://securingamerica.com , and see the speech I gave last week in Alabama. That’s the political side. I’m really here in an academic setting, a policy setting and a legal setting."
"I think that war and law are two critically important regimes of study and practice in the United States and it is very difficult to find people who really do the crosswalk between the two well. And yet the failure to do the crosswalk can lead to enormous policy failures."
He gave the crowd the modest caveat that he’d like to tackle these subjects "— as a scholar, an academician, a practitioner but NOT as someone who ran for office, or someone who might run for office." He asked if he could set aside partisanship and simply offer his best judgment— party affiliations aside.
"This is about our country, and our world, not about partisan politics."
"This is one of those moments where so much will depend on the outcome, the decisions, the choices made by our government in the weeks ahead. America’s army is in a crisis. We’re bogged down in a failing war in Iraq. The president said we’re going to put 20,000 more troops in but that’s a really hard stretch. The Iraq Study Group called for a draw down but the Iraq Study Group was taken by many as an admission of failure... It’s driven our Sunni allies in the region into despair."
"--And it’s made Iran ... even more triumphalist than it had already been. And it’s recognition that Al Qaeda is more numerous, increasingly diffused, and still very much lethal."
While I was pondering the novel sound of "triumphalist" rolling in my ear, the General had moved on to the prospect of Congress’s attempt to block the new troop surge into Iraq. He said that if they were successful-- we will be entering into a "different period"... If they achieve this, he says;
"—It's the first REAL check on the President’s foreign policy by Congress."
That statement hung like a lead sigh on the podium. Naked, stark truth, the kind that isn’t always favored by bright lights— It stung to recall that in six long years, we have had no real checks on the wildly exaggerated executive powers we witness in this White House.
I wriggled in my seat and checked the LA Times guy to be sure he’d caught that last nugget. He was scribbling into his notebook with a fierce intensity that I tried to match. A dueling scribble-off ensued.
Wes went on to expose the neocon hitlist of (PNAC targeted) countries in the region.
"The US is seriously considering a straight run of neoconservative policies in the region, which saw the invasion of Iraq as the first step in knocking off regimes in the region Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Libya, Somalia, Sudan-- and a complete reordering of the Middle East. And globally, we’re at a moment when US prestige and power are hanging in the balance."
Then his voice slipped into that plaintive tone he gets when he talks about America’s lost luster... about our fledgling international respect.
"What’s happened to this United States of America since the 11th of September, 2001 when 200,000 Germans demonstrated at the Brandenburg Gate? When people all over the world came out and supported us? What’s happened? The proponents of robust use of military power have encountered 'other realities'. It’s that simple."
He noted how facile it is in wartime to criticize the Generals, and how he’s hearing no shortage of that now, but that there were far more serious mistakes made beyond anything the Generals did or did not do. And in his typical orderly fashion, he then laid out the mistakes that were made, outside of the scope of a General’s duties.
THE MISTAKES
- The failures to appreciate the importance of law--
- The concept of legitimacy in the conduct of American affairs abroad,and
- The subsequent impact on public support at home
"Those indeed are serious failures. Those are war-losing failures. And they are not the responsibilities of the men and women in uniform. They’re the responsibilities of the United States government."
"I was on the Bill O’Reilly show the other night, and when I talk about diplomacy and international law... Bill accuses me of 'chatting'! He said; Oh go have one of those chats if you want...(laughter) He thinks I guess foreign policy is won by the bayonet fixed at the end of the rifle... I don’t. I think nations accomplish their focus in the world by changing people’s minds. But how? Dialogue, diplomacy, and especially law."
"Law is like the DNA of our society."
"The law genome has never been fully mapped... You can’t transplant it from one society to another, it sort of seeps across national boundaries. It infects people through the media. It permeates our political societies here and abroad. The influence of law builds culture.
But I’ve seen the power of law, and the ideas of legitimacy, affect the course of conflict. I’ve seen the United States use law and legitimacy to succeed, where all the military pundits predicted failure. And now, what I see is, for all the military pundits that predicted success- I see our neglect of law and legitimacy leading to our failure."
THE LESSON— JUST WAR THEORY
Wes- the classically trained Rhodes Scholar- then gave the room(s) a thorough history lesson on the US Constitution, war powers, and the split between legislative and executive branches and each iteration of it over the years. How the Draft bill of 1940 initiated for WWII was passed by one single vote. How the Congress of the time was so staunchly isolationist-- until Pearl Harbor, and (as with the New Pearl Harbor) how that reversed their proclivities and positions overnight.
Then in 1973 Congress passed, over the veto of the President, the War Powers Act -- so that Congress would have a voice in the decision to use military force. (what a concept!) The War Powers Act is the great problem for the executive branch -Wes says, and is debated endlessly. The Act has been invoked 114 times, and remains highly controversial, but—
"--It was not an issue in the case of Iraq. Because the President won Congressional support for his action (-we know who we have to thank for that) House Joint Resolution 144, October 11th, 2002, gave the President the authority to use force. He took it to the UN-- and then he used it... US law hasn’t been an issue thus far in Iraq, and International law, at least so far, has not technically been an issue. We went to war on legally sufficient grounds, both nationally and internationally."
Then he laid the golden egg of the lecture:
"The problem wasn’t legality. It was legitimacy."
"US actions went against the broad notions of legitimacy which had emerged at the heart of Just War theory. The adherence to which may be FAR MORE IMPORTANT than technical "legality".
"We were legal in Iraq, but are we legitimate?"
"Go back to the Old Testament, the beginning of western Just War theory. God often directed Israel’s armies, telling them who to fight – what to do with people they capture or kill, telling them to put whole nations to the sword and drive them out. It was the start of just war theory with a theological foundation."
"Professor Clark" informs us that St Augustine said that a war’s justice depends on its purpose, its authority and its conduct.
Rulers – per the Saint- had an OBLIGATION to maintain the peace. You don’t fight to defend yourself, you turn the other cheek, as Christ said. And so it was JUST for a ruler to fight— so long as the purpose was to restore the peace, and the use of force was not excessive or cruel. You couldn’t go to war for spoils, or for aggression...
He then brought up the concept of the force used being in proportion to the threat being dealt with. Ideas of using force only as a last resort, and protecting the innocents-- it being unjust to slaughter every man, woman and child-- bubbled up between the 15th to the 17th centuries. (the good old days?)
The 1899 Hague Convention set forth yet new parameters; peaceful settlement of disputes, pillaging and plundering were outlawed, hospitals and doctors were not to be attacked, prisoners are to be safeguarded- not tortured. The Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the 1977 Protocols codified into international law this Just War theory yet further.
Civilian populations shall not be subject to attack
"It’s law. It’s codified".
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It ached to recognize just how the Decider and his wrecking crew had thrust our country’s transmission into reverse 6 years ago- perched us on a downslope and released the parking brake. We've been leaving skid marks on the planet ever since. Wes always makes these revelations painfully clear.
UNDERCUTTING OUR LEGITIMACY
"After 2002, after the UN Security Council Resolution was passed, we began immediately undercutting our own legitimacy in the operation in Iraq.. Even in 2002 the neocon movement discussed ‘broader aims’"
-- General Clark opines that by Feb 2003-- the President had undercut the Just War PURPOSE for the operation – talking about "establishing democracy" instead of the Just War premise of the purpose of the operation: enforcing UN-SCR about weapons of mass destruction. Neocon publications made it clear, he says, that we were going to Iraq as a FIRST step- and
that it wasn’t about WMD, but about "broader geostrategic issues". So we had, from the outset, undercut the legitimacy of the legality.
"When you put a Christian army in an Arab country— you’d better work really hard at convincing the population that what you’re doing is legitimate. That should’ve drawn extraordinary measures... Especially after the President used the word "Crusade". And they called the Afghanistan operation initially "Operation Infinite Justice". In Muslim theology, "Infinite" is a word that belongs to the almighty - not to be used to describe human operations."
We further undercut our legitimacy by failing to use the "war as a last resort" standard. He says we went in initially announcing that "we don’t do body counts", losing legitimacy on the "protection of the innocents" standard. We were incredibly insensitive culturally— It says to them that we were not concerned about how many civilians we hurt.
The administration said: Change Regime. But that wasn’t the purpose. Capture Saddam. But that wasn’t the purpose. Then the failure to find WMD... further cutting the operation’s legitimacy.
Then they said we should exclude our soldiers under International Criminal Court from war crimes charges— our allies were forced to sign statements to this. Abu Ghraib and Gitmo... further cuts "–we were going against the very international conventions we had promoted ourselves." Renditions to secret prison sites violated both U.S. and international law.
"And after all is said and done, an operation has to be successful or effective in order to meet a Just War standard. By EVERY standard—
Purpose, Effectiveness, Protection of the Innocent, Use of Minimal Force, Proportionality of Force vs Threat, War as a Last Resort."
"We’ve undercut our legitimacy, and without that legitimacy... public support eroded. Without public support, the United States cannot succeed in the war against terror."
His voice drops now as he augurs:
"That’s a mission... in deep,deep trouble. And I want to reemphasize – I’m not speaking from a partisan perspective. I simply want to make the observation as someone who’s spent his life in this area. That this country has squandered its mantle of legitimacy in this conflict."
Wes makes the contrast with the Kosovo campaign and stresses that they strictly adhered to Just War theory principles—and they won. It was a last resort, it was effective, they used minimum force, in keeping with proportionality, and worked hard at protection of the innocents, and did it all by following Just War theory.
Kofi Annan had said that the war in Iraq was legal, but it’s not legitimate. And that conversely the war in Kosovo was technically illegal... but it was legitimate.
IRAN-- 1000 FEET OF LEVERAGE
"We need to keep the threat of Iran in perspective. And in dealing with them we have to realize that we are the most powerful country in the world. We have incredible economic strength. We hold the key to the G-8, the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund...the key to advanced technology, energy development-- We have that. So when I hear rumors that the President is unable to talk to Iran right now because we don’t have "leverage"-
-- If you have 1000 feet of leverage – do you need another half inch?"
We have 1000 feet of leverage over Iran. We’re completely dominant over the country. Can’t the most powerful nation in the world deign to speak to an aspiring regional power?
(whoops of applause burst forth from the room at this refreshing common sensical proclamation)
"The saber rattling has begun. We're refusing to talk to our potential opponents. We have to understand that there are limits to what pure force – or the threat of pure force- can accomplish. It is not about the killing. It’s about changing minds. In the struggle against Iran, we’ve got to have legality and we’ve got to have legitimacy. The military option remains on the table, but this is the time to strengthen U.S. legitimacy as we move forward. Not the time to threaten and saber rattle."
Wes lists OUR GREATEST WEAPONS in the war on terror...Note-- Sabers are not even on the list:
- The US Constitution
- The Bill of Rights
- Our adherence to international law
- Our respect for others of different cultures and religious faiths
Bear in mind-- that 'weapons' list is drafted by a General, ladies and gents.
If we use those weapons – with legitimacy, Wes says, the recruiting base for Al Qaeda will dry up and they’ll be left with a small hard core band of fanatics. They’ll lose their following.
"It’s a matter of understanding the linkages between legality, legitimacy and public support and success in modern warfare.... Thank you."
There was a hearty, extended round of applause followed up by questions. And then—
THE MONEY QUOTE
"We’re the most powerful country in the world. And our power is based not even on our military or our economy— but it’s based on the belief that America is slow to anger and slow to act. And righteous and fair in what we do. And when we go against that, we undercut our influence; it’s an undertow that cannot be offset by any number of aircraft carrier battle groups, or tomahawk missiles or army divisions. And that’s the power of doing the right thing. We may not always prevail without the use of force... But the use of force should always be the last, last, last resort".
Again, thus spake ^ a lifetime military man... if you're in the mood for dissolving any malingering stereotypes.
I dropped back to watch from a short distance as the General continued the discussion with various Deans and professors, indefatigably fielding yet more questions. I listened and mused...
...Given ample time and tools and a bucketful of turbo-powered imagination--still, I could not possibly invent a better candidate for President for this country, at this critical knot in our history. We're stranded at this now severed crosswalk between war and law, with no real leadership to walk us out of it. I tuck my notepad away, telling myself...
Maybe he'll announce at the next lesson.