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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 10/25/2003 9:10 AM (GMT -6) |   | Winning Modern Wars': Wesley K. Clark's Warpath
October 26, 2003
By MAX FRANKEL
On the front of his austere black-and-white book jacket,
Gen. Wesley K. Clark is presented as the former supreme
allied commander in Europe and the author of what purports
to be an expert analysis of the war in Iraq. But on the
book's back side, you will find a colorful full-page poster
of a handsome civilian with a winning smile and the
unmistakable ambition to commit more than military history.
''Winning Modern Wars'' turns out to be aptly wrapped. For
its 200 pages, many of them updated just a month ago, are
obviously designed to abet the swift transformation of a
once embittered warrior and armchair television analyst
into a hard-driving, platitudinous candidate for president.
That jacket speaks louder than the coy words with which
Clark denies any partisan purpose. He allows that while
writing he heard ''continuing speculation about whether I
might engage in some manner'' -- sic! -- ''in the 2004
election.'' But that ''looming decision had no bearing on
my analysis.'' His only aim, he insists, is to give voice
to the soldiers ''far from home, in an uncertain mission,''
because they ''cannot and should not speak for
themselves.''
Well, those soldiers and their fellow citizens can vote.
And the general cannot camouflage the partisan thrust of
his polemic. His deft review of the battlefield tactics
that won Baghdad in less than a month is merely the preface
to a bitter, global indictment of George W. Bush. The
president and his administration are condemned for
recklessly squandering a brilliant military performance on
the wrong war at the worst possible time, diverting
resources and talent from the pursuit of Al Qaeda,
neglecting urgent domestic needs and dissipating the
post-9/11 sympathy and support of most of the world.
No credit even for the one thing that Clark admires about
the American performance in Iraq. He recounts with relish
the ''synchronization of high-tech airpower with agile
ground maneuvers'' -- how the rapid advance of armor forced
Iraqi units to move and expose themselves to air and rocket
attacks, which in turn facilitated more ground advances.
But ''the irony is that the vision of . . . a high-tech
battlefield, viewed through an array of sensors, with
battles fought and won by precision strikes and a slimmer
ground component -- which the Bush administration, and
especially Donald Rumsfeld, have trumpeted, is largely a
reality that they inherited when they took office in
2001.''
In any case, the war in Iraq, though generally well fought,
was a costly diversion. ''Taking down Saddam became a
hobbyhorse'' for the group around Rumsfeld even before they
achieved authority over the Pentagon. And they exploited
9/11 as ''a gift-wrapped opportunity'' to try to ''clean up
the Middle East.'' So instead of concentrating on a
''knockout blow'' against Al Qaeda, they turned the focus
to Iraq and let the terrorists scatter from Afghanistan.
As portrayed by Clark, the attack on Saddam Hussein --
without evidence to link him to Al Qaeda -- was not only
wrong but deeply cynical. It bespoke a cold war mind-set of
assigning terrorists a state sponsor, a ''face'' that could
be more easily attacked. ''It was almost certain to be
successful. It emphasized U.S. military strengths and built
on a decade of preparation for a refight of the gulf war.''
The benefit of toppling Hussein is only faintly
acknowledged: ''All else being equal the region and the
Iraqi people were all better off with Saddam gone. But the
U.S. actions against old adversaries like Saddam have costs
and consequences that may still leave us far short of our
objectives of winning the war on terror -- or, in
themselves, may actually detract from our larger efforts.''
(Don't be fooled by those conditional ''mays''; the general
knows how to protect a rhetorical flank.)
The general's predictions were soon enough overtaken by the
sour news from Iraq. No one had planned properly for the
occupation of Iraq and how to keep its army. And the United
States Army proved ill suited for the tasks of empire.
Hedging against better news in the future, the general
observes, ''The occupation had thus far failed to meet
popular Iraqi expectations in restoring security and
minimal economic standards; Saddam Hussein had evaded
capture for months; Baathist elements were hostile; Al
Qaeda and other Islamic fighters were entering the country;
and a steady diet of daily sniping attacks, bombings and
ambushes were producing more casualties each week among the
Americans.''
How would a President Clark deal with these failures?
''Unfortunately, we are now engaged and fully committed''
and can't leave Iraq in chaos or to a Baathist or radical
Islamic regime. ''Now, if possible, we must transform a
successful military attack into victory by helping the
Iraqi people to use this opportunity to establish
representative government and the political and economic
freedoms that can at least serve as an example to others
throughout the region, as well as by demonstrating the
awesome constructive power of U.S. values, ideas and
resources.''
That may sound not unlike the policy of President Bush, and
indeed the president may ''at last'' want to welcome a
United Nations presence in Iraq, ''internationalize the
problem'' and get the soldiers of other nations to replace
some of our overtaxed forces. But Clark has no confidence
in the Bush team's view of the world or management of home
affairs. He thinks it has failed to find allies and friends
around the world and made a mess of the domestic economy.
''Not since Vietnam had a U.S. administration made the
mistake of going for 'guns and butter' simultaneously, or
asked so little of an American people at a time of
crisis.'' Might that be a gutsy call for higher taxes?
Well, not really: ''Tax cuts are a good idea, but we must
be certain that we have sufficient funds for defense and
other critical needs.'' It seems safer to dwell, at great
length, on the need for ''a new strategy for the 21st
century -- a broader, more comprehensive and less
unilateralist approach abroad coupled with greater
attention to a sound U.S. economy at home, and long-range
policies to take our nation forward successfully into the
future.''
It is a breathtaking vision. Besides sidling out of Iraq, a
President Clark would strengthen ''and use'' international
institutions, ''repair'' trans-Atlantic relations,
''resolve'' the nuclear challenges of North Korea and Iran,
help settle ''disputes'' between India and Pakistan and
Israel and the Palestinians, and help to ''ease the ongoing
conflicts'' in Africa. He would increasingly employ ''the
weapons of law enforcement rather than warfare in attacking
terrorism,'' focus more on the ''root causes'' of Islamic
terrorism and provide ''substantial economic and political
development assistance'' to stimulate ''far-reaching
reforms in critical societies in the Middle East.''
In America, too, he favors ''a fresh effort'' to balance
private initiatives and public responsibilities to enlarge
opportunity and strengthen the nation's competitiveness.
That means protecting our air, water and resources,
retaining a pluralistic democracy ''with institutional
checks and balances,'' meeting ''30-year challenges'' in
education and health care and ''smoothing out the business
cycle'' with both monetary and fiscal tools.
Clark glibly lists these objectives, and many more, without
suggesting any priorities of effort. And he makes no
attempt to explain how any American leader could
effectively reconcile so many conflicting ambitions and
sovereignties. His self-confidence seems rooted in his
experience as commander of the NATO forces that bombed and
pacified Kosovo in 1999, a headstrong performance that
enlarged his faith in international collaborations while it
poisoned his relations with peers and superiors at the
Pentagon.
As Clark recounted in a previous book, ''Waging Modern
War,'' his enemies in Washington managed to trick the
Clinton White House into firing him from the post of
supreme allied commander in Europe. And so he was left to
watch from a CNN studio as a new administration employed
the battle doctrines he had long championed in what he
bitterly concluded was a misguided cause in Iraq. It was
enough to drive a man to print, and to think he could do
better, as commander in chief.
Max Frankel, a former executive editor of The Times, is
completing a history of the Cuban missile crisis.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/books/review/26FRANKET.html?ex=1068109539&ei=1&en=02d6d112f9ed00d7
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 10/29/2003 6:34 AM (GMT -6) | | Clark Lays Responsibility for 9/11 at Bush's Feet
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
DURHAM, N.H., Oct. 28 — In a blistering review of President Bush's national security policy, Gen. Wesley K. Clark said on Tuesday that the administration could not "walk away from its responsibilities for 9/11."
"You can't blame something like this on lower-level intelligence officers, however badly they communicated in memos with each other," said the retired general, the latest entrant in the Democratic presidential field. "It goes back to what our great president Harry Truman said with the sign on his desk: `The buck stops here.' And it sure is clear to me that when it comes to our nation's national security, the buck rests with the commander in chief, right on George W. Bush's desk."
"And," he added, "we've got to say again and again and again, until the American people understand: strong rhetoric in the aftermath is no substitute for wise leadership."
General Clark's remarks were his most scathing of the campaign to date and went further than those of a number of other Democratic candidates in laying blame on the administration for intelligence failures.
He delivered those remarks in a private room at the University of New Hampshire here, reading from a teleprompter in giving a keynote speech, beamed to Washington by satellite, to a conference sponsored by The American Prospect, a liberal magazine, and two research groups.
That speech fell on the same day that General Clark, filling in more details of his domestic agenda, also delivered a major address here outlining his health care plan. He proposed spending $695 billion over 10 years, partly to guarantee coverage to all 13.1 million uninsured Americans under 22 years old, subsidize insurance for those who have difficulty paying for it and place a greater emphasis on preventive care.
His plan would allow people who have no insurance through employment to buy coverage from the same system available to members of Congress. It would also make liberal use of child tax credits. In all, he said, it would mean insurance for 31.8 million of the 43 million now uninsured.
In seeking to offer insurance for everyone under 22, General Clark was closely emulating a plan put forth by a presidential campaign rival, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, who would provide insurance for everyone under 21. But General Clark's aides said his plan would cover more uninsured than the plans of other candidates and would cost less than those proposed by everyone except Senator Edwards and a third candidate, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut.
In any case, General Clark's criticism of the conduct of the war in Iraq and his evident fury at Mr. Bush, which he took several opportunities to express, overshadowed his health care program, presented to an audience at the university here before he went on the attack by satellite.
Right after the health care speech, the general introduced some new confusion into his stance on the administration's request for $87 billion in emergency spending on Iraq and Afghanistan. He has said that he opposes the request, and he repeated that position on Tuesday. But he told one woman who asked him what he would do about Iraq, "We broke the dishes, we're going to pay for them."
Asked later by reporters to reconcile his opposition to the $87 billion request with his assertion that the United States should pay for the damage, he said, "Eventually we're going to have to do our part in the reconstruction of Iraq." But, he added, he will not support any appropriation until Mr. Bush has a strategy for getting out.
General Clark asserted that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld "had to leak his own memo," in which he gave a bleaker assessment of the administration's progress in Iraq than he has in public statements. The candidate said Mr. Rumsfeld had leaked the memorandum "because no one would have believed him that we've been two years in the war on terror and we don't have a strategy and we don't know how to measure success."
Asked how he knew that Mr. Rumsfeld was behind the leak, he replied, "Well, that's what the rumor is, and it's been talked about on the Sunday talk shows."
But that was only one arrow from a full quiver that General Clark aimed at the administration on Tuesday. In his address by satellite to Washington, he said the nation was now exposed to risk because the armed forces were fully committed in Iraq and "we have no real reserves, either physical or, unfortunately, intellectual."
As the accusations flew, the general's organization announced an addition to his camp. James P. Rubin, a State Department spokesman in the Clinton administration, will serve without pay as senior foreign policy adviser.
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 10/30/2003 5:20 PM (GMT -6) | | MARGARET WARNER: He's the newest entrant in a crowded field: Fifty-eight years old, born in Chicago and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, he graduated first in his class at West Point in 1966, and went on to earn a masters degree as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.
His 34-year Army career included 18 months as a headquarters staff officer and a company commander in Vietnam, where he was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart and Silver Star, a year as commanding general of the U.S. Southern Command in Panama, and three years, from 1997 to 2000, as the NATO supreme allied commander in Europe.
There, he commanded Operation Allied Force, NATO's successful intervention in the ethnic conflict in Kosovo. He retired in 2000 as a four- star general. He opened a consulting firm in Little Rock, and has written two books on modern warfare. General Clark joins us now.
Welcome, General Clark.
WESLEY CLARK: Thank you, Margaret.
MARGARET WARNER: Welcome back as a candidate this time.
WESLEY CLARK: It's great to be with you.
President Bush's tax cuts
MARGARET WARNER: Let's start with the big economic news today -- a jump 7 percent in the GDP-- more than 7 percent in last quarter. President Bush's aides, the White House aides are pointing to his tax cuts. Can they take the credit?
WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think that the real issue on the tax cuts is how much better could we have been if the tax cuts had gone to the people who really needed them? I mean, what you had was a lot of people in this country who really needed money. I talk to a lot of big department store owners dealing with ordinary Americans, they said our people are desperate, so when people got that check in July, you bet.
But it's amazing how much of that tax cut was targeted to people who didn't need it. Almost a trillion dollars over the next ten years is going to Americans who are making, you know, $150,000-$200,000 a year or more and a lot of these people are saying they don't really need this money.
MARGARET WARNER: But now you've called for reversing some of those tax cuts.
WESLEY CLARK: I have.
MARGARET WARNER: But let's say this is the beginning of an economic rebound and a year from now, we're in a full recovery and a booming economy. Would it still be necessary in your view to reverse the Bush tax cuts?
WESLEY CLARK: Well, none of the economic models show that the recovery is going to be strong enough to restore fiscal responsibility. We're not going to get back to a balanced budget with the amount of the tax cuts that have been given away according to any of the economic models. Even if you take the most optimistic models, you say they're still too low, boost it up by another third sustained, it still doesn't get us back to a balanced budget.
So this is a real problem for us because as the baby boom generation ages and retires, then we start drawing off the Social Security money that we're all putting away right now. When we're no longer earning that money, we start drawing down that and, you know, we're operating in the United States under what we call a unified federal budget so there's an operating budget and then you add in the Social Security together. That's the deficit that's $374 billion -- the unified federal budget.
MARGARET WARNER: So your answer is you would still take back the tax cuts for anyone earning more than $200,000?
WESLEY CLARK: Yes, we would. And that's the plan right now. Obviously, you know, I will always look at that. Nobody wants to have to collect tax revenues. But you have to be responsible about what the country needs.
Strategies for postwar Iraq
MARGARET WARNER: All right. Let's turn to Iraq. More attacks today. There have been horrific attacks this week. If you became president tomorrow, what would you do to restore some sort of security there?
WESLEY CLARK: Well, the first thing I would do is get the big picture right. And what you've got is a regional dynamic in which both Syria and Iran are working consciously against the United States in the region because they believe that this administration intends to handle them next.
So that a U.S. success, however it's defined in Iraq, means that then the United States is free to put more pressure on them. So they don't want us to have that success so the regional dynamic needs to be worked inside Iraq. We would go immediately back to Kofi Annan at the United Nations and say let's talk again about what the United Nations or an international organization could do. I would remove that occupying power, that authority there. I'd put it under the United Nations or an international organization. I would ask the Iraqi governing council to take more responsibility for governing Iraq.
One of the things we want to do is we want to avoid the emergence in Iraq of more intense sect feelings. You have the Kurds in the North. They're armed; they kept their army. They're very concerned if the Turks were to come in. They're prepared if anything should go wrong in the rest of Iraq, they're prepared to say, okay, we have got our independent Kurdistan. You have the Shia in the South. They've never gotten really organized and they're not... they have not been traditionally as radicalized as the Iranian Shia population has, but they're organizing. There's a 500,000 man army of god in Baghdad. There's others and there's jostling for position and there's been some assassinations and assassination attempts in there. If that goes the wrong way, we could have real violence in Iraq.
MARGARET WARNER: All right. Let's go back to something you just said, though. Are you saying that the coalition authority that Paul Bremer heads now, you would transfer that authority to the U.N.?
WESLEY CLARK: Yes, I would.
MARGARET WARNER: Would you retain U.S. authority over the military aspect?
WESLEY CLARK: Yes, you must do that. The United Nations cannot do the military piece, but I believe that you can put the United Nations or you can form an international organization as we did in the case of Bosnia to do the political development and the economic development, and you can take Halliburton out of the expanded nation building role it has and let it do what it normally does which is provide some of the logistics back up for the American troops.
MARGARET WARNER: All right. But are you saying you would do this because you think then that would encourage foreign countries to send serious numbers of troops to help?
WESLEY CLARK: I think you do it for three reasons. First, because it takes the United States off the blame line in the eyes of the Iraqi people and especially in the Islamic world. So now it's not a U.S. occupation. It's a lot of the different nations who are simply there trying to help because remember it's not only the international authority but you make the Iraqi governing council immediately take more responsibility. Then number two, I think it improves your chance of getting more significant, more immediate grant economic assistance. Number three, I do think it makes it more likely you'll get more substantial numbers of foreign troops.
MARGARET WARNER: President Bush said in his press conference Tuesday, we're not leaving, quote unquote, until Iraq is stable. Are you suggesting that the U.S. would ever leave militarily before the situation was stable?
WESLEY CLARK: I think we have to be very careful about leaving. We don't want to leave prematurely. We don't want Iraq to fall apart, but there is a window in there in which we've got the optimum chance for stabilizing and after which if we don't handle things right, it could go downhill and be counterproductive for us.
MARGARET WARNER: So when you say, as you said in the debate Sunday night, you said you want the president... let me get the exact words...you're waiting for the president, to quote, have a strategy to get out. What is your strategy to get out?
WESLEY CLARK: Well, what I do is first of all I've just described it. I put the international authority in. I reduce the influence of the U.S. occupying authority. I put the Iraqi governing council more in charge. I work for the constitution of the Iraqis in the long term. I keep the U.S. in charge of the security situation. I build up the Iraqi security forces. And I would... I do it all the same way we did it, let's say, in the Balkans. We put out a matrix. You said here's your political. Here's your economic. Here's your military. Here's what you're going to do this month, that month, so forth. Here's where you want to be. Here's your objectives. Here's how much it's going to cost. Show it to the American people.
MARGARET WARNER: Here's what I'm trying to get at. Do you agree, for instance, with the Bush administration that until the Iraqis have a constitution and a government elected under that constitution that they can't run the show themselves?
WESLEY CLARK: No, I don't agree that they've got to have a constitution. I mean it took the United States of America seven years after its independence to get a constitution finished. I mean, we started with the Articles of Confederation. So they may work for a long time on a constitution. We don't want to be there running the show in Iraq for seven years.
Outlook on foreign policy
MARGARET WARNER: Let me ask you about something you said Tuesday on another foreign policy issue in the speech. You said there's no way this administration can walk away from its responsibility for 9/11. What are you saying there? Are you saying the president could have prevented the September 11 attacks and somehow failed in his responsibility to do so?
WESLEY CLARK: What I'm saying is the president is the commander in chief. He's the highest authority in the United States of America. When something goes wrong, he has an obligation to lead and participate actively in the investigation of what went wrong, not to stonewall it. He needs to provide that information in the presidential commission.
One more thing, Margaret: When you look at this, every military commander in the aftermath of a military operation, whether it's a success or failure, we all do what we call after-action reviews. And the commander participates in it. He's not exempt. He doesn't say, well, my intelligence officer didn't do this. He actually lays it out. They say, what happened exactly? And why did it happen? And everybody fesses up.
Now we don't know exactly what happened in this administration but what we do know is that the threat of Osama bin Laden was well known and recognized on the 21st of January in 2001. What we also know is that in September on the 10th of September, there was still no plan for dealing with Osama bin Laden.We don't really know what happened. We don't know whether that was normal, whether it was abnormal but here is what I think the American people need to know.
I think they need to know that the President of the United States believes that the buck stops on his desk, not on the desk of FBI official in Arizona or somebody in Minnesota who didn't communicate a memo and so forth and that everything was okay because no one told him.
When you're the commander in chief, it's your obligation to know, to set the command climate as we would say in the military -- the intensity of your effort. You do your homework. You work the issues. Your highest obligation as the President of the United States next to upholding the Constitution is to assure the security of the United States of America.
The progress of the Clark campaign
MARGARET WARNER: Let me end with a quick strategy question, maybe a brief answer. When you got in this race you jumped to the top of the national polls but since then in the last five or six weeks you're still in the states where they're paying attention, New Hampshire, South Carolina, you're still down in the single digits or maybe just out of them. Is this proving tougher than you thought?
WESLEY CLARK: No it's not but it is a matter of simply getting an organization on the ground. I think we now have six people on the payroll in New Hampshire. I think the lowest next campaign has 40 and some of the campaigns have 80. We still don't have a television ad out. But we're the only one who doesn't in New Hampshire. So there are some practical matters. It just takes a while.
This is like launching a... starting a transatlantic voyage and building the ship as you leave the harbor. Well, I mean that's what it was. I never thought I'd be running for the President of the United States.
But I'll tell you, Margaret, I never thought the United States would be in such a condition as this both abroad and at home. We talked at the beginning about the economic situation: 3.3 million jobs lost -- the first administration since Herbert Hoover.
MARGARET WARNER: Wesley Clark, thanks for being with us.
WESLEY CLARK: Thank you.
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 11/1/2003 6:14 AM (GMT -6) | | Clark interview...
http://www.maximonline.com/grit/articles/article_5504.html | | Back to Top | | |
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