To Sir With Love - A Wesley Clark Blog

Video links for Clarkbot

Rick Keller of the exceptionally helpful Clark scrape Clarkbot recently informed us that his bot is limited to posts that contain "Wesley Clark." While he has been one of the best drivers towards TSWL, I realized that he never picks up on my video pickups; I wasn't thinking RSS and left out "Wesley Clark" in the post text.

So in the interest of completeness here's the story thus far:

CSPAN video search

Chris Matthews on Iraq, Hardball MSNBC 11/13/03

Buchanan & Press, MSNBC 11/10/03

Planned Parenthood debate, NH, 11/5/03

Laura Knoy interview, NH Public Radio, 11/5/03

Rock the Vote, Boston MA, 11/4/03 - Complete Clark

Rock the Vote 30 second spot, Boston MA, 11/4/03

NH HQ opening, 11/2/03

E. Drew rebuts military critics, Inside Politics 10/31/03

Lou Dobbs' interview, CNN 10/27/03

Chris Matthews' interview, Hardball 10/24/03

Critics Debate Clark's Military Record, NPR 10/16/03

Civilian Reserve speech, Hunter College, NYC 10/14/03

IA Town Meeting 10/6/03

DNC Fall Meeting 10/3/03

Town Hall Meeting NH 9/26/03

DNC Candidates Dinner 9/25/03

Indianapolis 9/23/03

Announcement Speech 9/17/03

"Sound Off With Sasha" 6/27/03

New Democrat Network 6/17/03

Hearing on U.S. Policy in Iraq 9/23/02

Nat'l Security for a New Era 11/14/01

New Video - Chris Matthews interview on Exit Strategy, Hardball 11/13/03

Video link

Perhaps it helps to be interviewed by someone whose approach is not deliberately provocative, but Gen. Clark and the irascible Chris Matthews seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly. WKC is back on form and concise in this rather detailed analysis of the situation on the ground in Iraq. And how's this for drawing a line in the sand? "There’s no innate strategic value in Iraq." Complete transcript here.

CLARK: I think it’s an emerging struggle. I think that what’s happening is that when you first come into a country like this, if you come in with enough force, with well-prepared plans, you intimidate those who might oppose you. The majority of the people are favorably impressed. They’re on your side. They want to see a positive change.

That was the promise that we gave them. But we didn’t come in with adequate forces. We did not come in with well-prepared plans on how to deal with the aftermath of war. And we showed certain vulnerabilities.

We gave these people who disliked us and wanted to fight against us a chance to get a foothold. And we demonstrated vulnerability sufficient to attract al Qaeda or other outside terrorists to come in and take their pot shots at Americans. And as they did, with each successive week of increasing violence, the Iraqi people themselves began to draw back.

And so what you’ve got is a mounting insurgency campaign. It’s a pickup campaign. I doubt that Saddam Hussein is very much in charge of it, if at all. But someone, some groups are. They’re forming together. They’re exchanging ideas. They’re working strategies. It will eventually coalesce into various regional fights. It may not ever be an organized national fight.

But these are people who obviously, strongly hold beliefs that they want us out of the country or they want to kill and injure Americans. And so, you know, it is as Rick Sanchez and others have said, it’s a war. It’s an insurgency and we have to deal with it as such.

But don’t give Saddam Hussein credit for this. This wasn’t his plan.

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, General, you’re running for president on the Democratic side. If you win the nomination, you win the election, how would things be different in the occupation in Iraq?

CLARK: Well, we proposed last week, Chris, a success strategy. It involves three principle elements.

First, we’d form an international organization, an umbrella organization. The U.N. can’t do this, but the United States cannot either maintain exclusive control of the political and economic authorities in Iraq. So we need an international organization like we used in Bosnia.

Call it the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Agency. Give all the countries who want to help a seat at the table. Put a non-American in charge, and let them assist in the political and check development of Iraq.

Secondly, give as much of the country back to the Iraqis as rapidly as possible. The Iraqi council is not working, but what is working is local democracy. Have each of the 50 local councils select two representatives to come to a central government. Indirect election of a central government, if you will. Let them start to have authority. Build staff, create policies and increasingly, take on more and more of the responsibilities of running Iraq.

And then as far as the military is concerned, I would bring NATO in. I’d put John Abizaid in Central Command reporting to NATO. Give our NATO allies a voice and a policy in the activities.

And at the same time, I’d be working to transform the U.S. footprint, make it lighter, smaller, more agile, more lethal, go after the insurgents directly and take away the kinds of soft logistics traffic that they like to hit.

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about the end game. How do you see that end game right now? I was just writing it up. And I want to know if it’s right or not.

We’d like to leave a moderate stable government in place. We’d like to leave the country in a couple of years and be basically cheered on the way out, like a good government would be. Is that the goal? A moderate stable government that we would leave behind and they like us as we leave?

CLARK: Chris, I think the most important element of this is that you can’t have a strategy, if you’re the administration and you don’t define what success is. This administration has not defined success.

And so your definition of it is OK. I’d define it a little bit differently. I’d say an Iraq strong enough to protect its own borders and maintain its integrity but not so strong that it threaten its neighbors. An Iraq that has enough internal security that it doesn’t have al Qaeda recruiting elements but not so much that it crushes democratic ideas. And an Iraq that has a government that is more or less representative of the people in some democratic form.

MATTHEWS: Suppose they elect a mullah style government like we have had in Iran at its worst all these years, since the hostage taking back in ’79. Suppose they elect a pretty violent or pretty zealous government of mullahs and shirah (ph), and they try to impose all that very conservative rule.
Shall we still leave and let them have it?

CLARK: Well, I don’t think you can occupy a country and fight against the will of the majority of the inhabitants. We’re fighting against a very small number of people in Iraq now. If the people of Iraq ever really turned against the United States there, then it’s time to leave.

There’s no innate strategic value in Iraq. We’re just trying to help them help themselves.

So what we have to think about is that what’s really going on over there is sort of three levels, Chris.

The top level is the warfare that we’re seeing, the insurgency, the counterinsurgency.

Below that are 24 million Iraqis struggling to survive and live their everyday lives and we’re trying to help them and doing a very good job of it, by every report I get. And the troops should be proud of what they’re trying to do to protect what they’ve done to promote the reconstruction of Iraq.

The third level is the Shia population. They’ve never had the freedom to organize. They are now organizing. Traditionally, they have not been as radical as those, as the Shia in Iran. But there are contending elements and factions in here, and if they ever organize and decide that this is their moment and they want to us leave, then we’ll be in real difficulty staying.

And when we leave, if the Shia are in charge, you can expect the Kurds then to make their bid for independence and the Sunnis will fight.

And so we’ve got to be very careful as we move this. There’s a very brief window to make this come out right. We’ve got to put the Iraqis in charge just as soon as possible.

Saudi commandos? Mark Kleiman gets Clark's point

While administration attempts to conflate the war in Iraq with the war on terrorism are losing traction in the polls, its too little, too late, too fast initiatives aimed at "Iraqification" have failed to convince those who view the world situation from outside the OK corral. Fareed Zakaria, in a recent Newsweek opinion piece, predicts ". . . the desperation to move faster and faster is going to have bad results. Accelerating the training schedule (which has already been accelerated twice before) will only produce an ineffective Iraqi Army and police force. Does anyone think that such a ragtag military could beat the insurgency where American troops are failing?"

Despite Bush's re-formulation of America's global mission as liberator of the oppressed (described by Michael Kinsley as "some of the finest eloquence that money can buy"), what the world needs now is not so much an Iraqification that gets us the hell out just before next year's election, but an Arabification of the war on terror that finally acknowledges that sooner or later US foreign policy must value peace more highly than oil.

Speaking from his considerable experience as a commander of military and intelligence resources, Gen. Clark recently outlined just such a policy: "I would press Saudi Arabia to join US forces in creating a US-Saudi commando force to work the Afghan-Pakistani border where bin Laden is thought to be hiding." Why WKC's efforts to innovate foreign policy are so easily dismissed by many in the chattering class while Howard Dean's arrogant stereotyping is hailed as just what the doctor ordered is puzzling. The New Republic's reliably downbeat assessment is all too typical:

So Clark's "plan" for getting Al Qaeda revolves in part on getting increased cooperation from the Saudis. That's like creating an organization devoted to women's rights and asking Arnold Schwarzenegger to be the first president. Hasn't Clark learned from the past? No matter what happens--thousands of Americans killed in 9/11, bombs all over the Saudi Kingdom--the Saudi royal family still won't face up to the role its organizations and charities have played, and still play, in fomenting violence and extremism. The United States needs to rely less, not more, on Saudi Arabia, in all respects of our relationship.

Which respected blogger Mark Kleiman appreciates was not the point of Clark's proposal to involve Saudi commandos in our efforts to extradite Osama Bin Laden from the no man's land between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Clark's suggestion is skewed more to giving our Saudi "friends" the opportunity to do what's right than toward an alternative military solution.

Kleiman writes: Diplomatically, the idea strikes me as rather brilliant. It's a no-lose proposition. Either the Saudis come with us, thus committing themselves against al-Qaeda, or they don't, thus making the hollowness of their asserted cooperation against terrorism clear.

. . . In domestic political terms, there is obvious value in reminding the country that the president's promise to bring in bin Laden "dead or alive" has been conspicuously unmet, and is no longer being seriously pursued. . . What do we have to lose? If we tried Clark's idea, and the Saudis leaked, we wouldn't catch Osama bin Laden. Just how does that leave us worse off than we would be not taking up Clark's idea, in which case we certainly won't catch Osama bin Laden.

Kleiman concludes: "Clark hasn't been getting much ink of late, and much of the ink he has been getting hasn't been good. But his ability to get press coverage for an actual policy proposal rather than a political maneuver makes him stand out from the field.

With Bob Graham out, of all the candidates still in the race for president Clark alone is capable of discussing national security issues at a professionally respectable level. That's worth considering, whether you like his individual ideas or not."

Amen.

WKC poised and pragmatic in Business Week interview

Despite his experience as a CNN commentator, talking head appearances from remote locations are proving to be the general's least effective media opportunities. While he is best interacting with voters in town hall settings, where the media are observers rather than participants, Gen. Clark is also extremely effective in print interview settings, where he often answers questions with a poised economy preferable to the defensive sound bites with which he sometimes rebuts criticism on pundit TV. Joining a Rolling Stone interview from 9/11/2003, where Clark was more perceptive than polemical about the current administration, is a recent conversation with Business Week. In it, we see a new poise in deflecting several of the media's favorite questions.

Q: After much early hoopla, your campaign seems to have lost altitude. When will your Presidential bid take off?

A: . . . Unlike the [Howard] Dean campaign, this is not a campaign of protest. This effort is built around hope and promise. We have yet to spend our first penny on advertising. When you've never done this before, there's no magic. It just takes a lot of hard work.

Q: You've spent much time on the defensive, explaining your changing views on Iraq and your earlier praise of the President. Are these issues behind you?

A: Those aren't issues. They don't resonate. The American people don't care whether I praised [George W.] Bush or not or when I became a Democrat. They care about things like, "What are we going to do now about Iraq?"

Q: The economy grew at 7.2% in the last quarter and is generating new jobs. Do you really think you can do better?

A: . . . First, [we need] direct government action to help address urgent needs with infrastructure, homeland security, tuition assistance, and the like. Secondly, [we must] work on science and technology with a real national goals program that invests real money. Third, we need a program of education that assures that every boy and girl is developed to their full potential. Vouchers won't do it; charter schools won't do it. It's public education.

. . .

Q: Are you a real outsider in the Presidential race if you've spent years rubbing shoulders with the business and academic elites?

A: I'm not an outsider, and I'm not an insider. I'm not making tactical decisions. I'm just trying to be myself. The difference is that I'm not a politician.

. . .

Q: What has surprised you since you entered the race?

A: [Hoarsely] Losing my voice! I just keep talking too much.

College newspaper report captures Clark as soldier, comrade, clued-in dude

It's a great time to be a college student in New England, if you have the least bit of interest in politics, the media, or the fate of the western world. Retail primary campaigning allows all manner of observers, both professional and merely interested, access to the candidates' personalities that contrasts starkly with the red, white, and blue bubble inhabited by our sitting president. Two Bowdoin College students attended Wesley Clark's visit to a Veteran's Day get-together in New Hampshire and their account, published in the Bowdoin Orient, trumps the media-nourished spitefulness with which the military brass have so gratuitously smeared the general.

Evan Kohn, the youngest person in the room by 15 years, was on a mission to confirm a particular aspect of Gen. Clark's authenticity: ". . . Does General Wesley Clark really listen to OutKast's rap tunes? I was committed to finding out the truth."

As Clark went to greet the next veteran, I held my arm out in front of him and said, "It's great to see an OutKast fan running for President." I had no idea how he would respond. This Veterans Day event couldn't have been more removed from anything remotely linked to MTV or the rap world. But, the General immediately lightened up and grabbed my hand while laughing. Suddenly Clark and I were completely surrounded by reporters and he whispered into my ear, "You gotta shake it like a Polaroid picture," quoting lyrics from OutKast's recent hit song, "Hey Ya!" My question had been answered.

Not until hours later did it occur to me that a top Presidential Candidate, West Point Valedictorian, Oxford Rhodes Scholar, NATO Supreme Commander, Kosovo Operation Allied Force leader, and United States General had actually whispered rap lyrics into my ear.

. . .

After returning to the VFW, Clark bought a promised round of Sam Adams for the entire honor guard while mingling with the Franklin mayor and other vets. Clark made several trips, personally delivering beers to the men. He carried up to four beers in a hand once, and ignored the press photographing his every move.

. . .

It is evident many would love to see Clark establish clear stances on central Democratic Party issues. As long as he spends as much time writing a clear domestic political agenda as he studies OutKast lyrics, Wesley Clark should be a solid candidate.

At the Hampton Falls town green gathering, some people had probably never seen Edwards's face before. At the Weirs Beach firehouse, Kerry assertively attempted to sway an elderly crowd of mostly "healthcare voters" on why his experience deserves their vote. At the Keene house party, Dean sought to energize the tightly-packed group of supporters, independents, and even fishermen, behind his cause.

But here, Clark was amongst what people seemed to be his brothers. I knew very little about the VFW world before the event, but I liked what I saw. There, men don't have to recount their unforgettable stories, but instead can connect by single handshakes. They share a common understanding of what it means to serve your country. As Clark marched down the street with the post commander, the two chatted as though they had grown up together. If only elected officials shared the same camaraderie.