Earlier this week, Amy Goodman interviewed Wes Clark at the 92nd St. Y in NYC. He was not there to talk about presidential politics and a possible candidacy. Clark was there to talk about public policy, the Middle East and the current administration. This appearance is part of his campaign to do everything he can to stop the Bush Administration from taking us to war with Iran.
MariaWells’ first person diary led into a long discussion here last night. After reading through, I did the next best thing to being there and followed the links to transcript and audio.
Goodman laid out the program at the top:
… the possibility of a US attack on Iran; the impeachment of President Bush; the use of cluster bombs; the bombing of Radio Television Serbia during the Kosovo War under his command…
Excepts after the jump, emphasis added. This is adult swim: hold on tight.
Note: seems I hit the word limit. I'll post sections tomorrow and Monday...
Right off the bat, we're deep into real politik
WKC: … when I testified in front of Congress in 2002, I said if you want to worry about a state, it shouldn’t be Iraq, it should be Iran. But this government, our administration, wanted to worry about Iraq, not Iran.
…About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. … “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?” He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.” So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.”
Clark learns of a classified memo from Rumsfeld’s office, describing how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”
WKC: … Iran, from the beginning, has seen that the presence of the United States in Iraq was a threat -- a blessing, because we took out Saddam Hussein and the Baathists. They couldn’t handle them. We took care of it for them. But also a threat, because they knew that they were next on the hit list. And so, of course, they got engaged. They lost a million people during the war with Iraq, and they’ve got a long and unprotectable, unsecurable border. So it was in their vital interest to be deeply involved inside Iraq. They tolerated our attacks on the Baathists. They were happy we captured Saddam Hussein.
But they're building up their own network of influence, and to cement it, they occasionally give some military assistance and training and advice, either directly or indirectly, to both the insurgents and to the militias. … there has been, I believe, continuous Iranian engagement, some of it legitimate, some of it illegitimate. I mean, you can hardly fault Iran because they're offering to do eye operations for Iraqis who need medical attention. That's not an offense that you can go to war over, perhaps. But it is an effort to gain influence.
And the administration has stubbornly refused to talk with Iran about their perception, in part because they don't want to pay the price with … our US domestic political base, the rightwing base, but also because they don't want to legitimate a government that they've been trying to overthrow. If you were Iran, you'd probably believe that you were mostly already at war with the United States anyway, since we've asserted that their government needs regime change, and we've asked Congress to appropriate $75 million to do it, and we are supporting terrorist groups, apparently, who are infiltrating and blowing up things inside Iraq -- Iran. And if we're not doing it, let's put it this way: we're probably cognizant of it and encouraging it. So it's not surprising that we're moving to a point of confrontation and crisis with Iran.
My point on this is not that the Iranians are good guys -- they're not -- but that you shouldn't use force, except as a last, last, last resort. There is a military option, but it's a bad one.
Has Congress approriated $75 million for regime change in Iran? It's the middle of the night and I don't have a clue.
Saudis, Sunnis, Shias and Al-Qaeda. Clark comments on his recent trip to Saudi Arabia, stressing the complexity of the mess we’ve exacerbated, not entirely on our own and certainly not entirely in this decade.
… the Saudis have … recognized that they have an enormous stake in the outcome in Iraq, and they don't particularly trust the judgment of the United States in this area. We haven't exactly proved our competence in Iraq. So they're trying to take matters into their own hands.
…let's say we did follow the desires of some people who say, “Just pull out, and pull out now.” Well, yeah. We could mechanically do that. It would be ugly, and it might take three or four months, but you could line up the battalions on the road one by one, and you could put the gunners in the Humvees and load and cock their weapons and shoot their way out of Iraq. You'd have a few roadside bombs. But if you line everybody up, there won't be any roadside bombs. Maybe some sniping. You can fly helicopters over, do your air cover. You’d probably get safely out of there. But when you leave, the Saudis have got to find someone to fight the Shias. Who are they going to find? Al-Qaeda, because the groups of Sunnis who would be extremists and willing to fight would probably be the groups connected to al-Qaeda. So one of the weird inconsistencies in this is that, were we to get out early, we’d be intensifying the threat against us of a super powerful Sunni extremist group, which was now legitimated by overt Saudi funding in an effort to hang onto a toehold inside Iraq and block Iranian expansionism.
John Negroponte (In January, we learned the National Intelligence Director would resign his post to become Deputy Secretary of State.) http://www.cnn.com/...
Goodman: … Seymour Hersh says, [Negroponte resigned because of his] discomfort that the administration's covert actions in the Middle East so closely echo the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, and Negroponte was involved with that.
WKC: Well, I’m sure there are a lot of reasons why John would go back to the State Department. John’s a good … man. But… the question … in government is, can you … are you bigger than your job? Because if you're not bigger than your job, you get trapped by the pressures of events and processes, into going along with actions that you know you shouldn't. ... I don't know why he left the National Intelligence Director’s position. He started in the State Department.
Goodman asks Clark if he agrees with the generals who are threatening to resign if the United States attacks Iran, and later about officers, she specifies Ehren Watada, refusing to go.
On Labor Day weekend of 1994… I was a three-star general. I was in the Pentagon... Walt Kross was the director of the Joint Staff, and he was in the office. And I think it was either Howell Estes or Jack Sheehan who was the J3 at the time. The three of us … were in Shalikashvili’s office about 11:00 in the morning on a Saturday morning, and he had just come back from a White House meeting. And he was all fired up in the way that Shali could be. And he said, “So,” he said, “we will see who will be the real soldiers this weekend! There's much work to be done! This operation on Haiti has to be completed! The planning must be done correctly, and it must be done this weekend! So we will see who are the real soldiers!”
Then the phone buzzed, and he got up from this little round table the four of us were sitting at to take the call from the White House. We started looking at each other...we were all getting ready to check out of the building in an hour or so. We had finished off the messages and paperwork and we just usually got together because there was normally a crisis every Saturday anyway, and so we ... would come in for the Saturday morning crisis. … Shali came back, and so I said to him,,. “Well, sir, we've been talking amongst ourselves, and we're happy to work all weekend to get all this done, but this is just a drill, right, on Haiti?”
He looked at me, and he said, “Wes,” he said, “this is no drill.” He said, “I’m not authorized to tell you this. But,” he said “the decision has been made, and the United States will invade Haiti. The date is the 20th” -- I think it was this date -- “of the 20th of September. And the planning must be done, and it must be done now. And if any of you have reservations about this, this is the time to leave.” So I looked at Jack, and I looked at Walt. They looked at me. I mean, we kind of shrugged our shoulders and said, “OK, if you want to invade Haiti, I mean, it's not illegal. It's not the country we'd most like to invade. The opposition there consists of five armored vehicles. But sure, I mean, if the President says to do it, yeah, we're not going resign over it.” And so, we didn't resign. Nobody resigned.
But Shali was a very smart man. He knew. He knew he was bigger than his job, and he knew that you had to ask yourself the moral, legal and ethical questions first. And so, I’m encouraged by the fact that some of these generals have said this about Iran. They should be asking these questions first.
AG: What about the soldiers who are saying no to going to Iraq right now? What do you think of these young men and women -- there are now thousands -- who are refusing? People like First Lieutenant Ehren Watada, first commissioned officer to say no to deploy, who says he feels it's wrong. He feels it's illegal and immoral, and he doesn't want to lead men and women there.
WKC: … he’s certainly made a personally courageous statement. And he'll pay with the consequences of it.
AG: Do you think he should have to go to jail for that?
WKC: I think that you have to have an effective armed forces. And … it's not up to the men and women in the Armed Forces to choose where they'll go to war, because at the very time you need the Armed Forces … there will be a certain number of people who will see it the other way. And so, I support his right to refuse to go, and I support the government's effort to bring charges against him. This is the way the system works.
[In] the case … I described with Shalikashvili … we would have been given the chance to retire. We would have left our jobs. We might not have retired as three-star generals, because we hadn't done our duty. But we weren't in the same circumstance … so there wasn't necessarily going to be charges brought against us.
But an armed forces has to have discipline… The trouble with Iraq is, it's not illegal; it was authorized by the United States Congress. It was authorized by the United Nations Security Council resolution. It's an illegitimate war, but not an illegal war.
AG: Do you think it's wrong?
WKC: [Is it] wrong to fight in Iraq? Well, I think it's a mistake. I think it's a bad strategy. I think it's brought us a lot of grief, and it will bring us a lot more grief. I think it's been a tremendous distraction from the war on terror, a diversion of resources, and it's reinforced our enemies. But on the other hand, his case is a moral case, not a legal case. And if you're going to be a conscientious objector morally like this, then what makes it commendable is that you'll take your stand on principle and pay the price. If there's no price to be paid for it, then the courage of your act isn't self-evident. So he's taken a very personally courageous stand. But on the other hand, you have to also appreciate the fact that the Armed Forces has to be able to function.
… in World War I in France, there were a series of terribly misplaced offensives … they failed again and again and again. The French took incredible losses. And these were conscript armies. And after one of these failures, a group of thousands of soldiers simply said, “We're not doing this again. It's wrong.” You know what the French did? They did what they call decimation. They lined up the troops. They took every tenth soldier, and they shot them. Now, the general who ordered that, he suffered some severe repercussions, personally, morally, but after that the soldiers in France didn't disobey. Had the army disintegrated at that point, Germany would have occupied France. So when you're dealing with the use of force, there is an element of compulsion in the Armed Forces.
More tomorrow. And Monday.
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