I was fortunate enough to see Wes Clark interviewed by Amy Goodman at the 92nd St Y in NYC last night. He was, as usual, wonderful, knowledgeable and brutally honest.
He and his lovely wife Gert met with a small group of supporters before the event. Wes spoke to us and answered questions for about half an hour. He told us how much we all meant to him. He took questions, of course, about a potential ’08 run but said nothing committal, only that he’s trying to turn the conversation to a discussion of the issues and doesn’t know if it can be done. Running for President was too much about celebrity, he said.
Someone asked about his trip to Saudi Arabia and he said that there’s a lot of anger toward Americans, not just the Bush Administration as before but now toward Americans. He spoke of how he’d talked to people before the ‘04 election who said they did not hold all Americans accountable for what Bush was doing because we didn’t all elect him but things would be different if he put him back in office...and he won "an uncontested election", I think that’s the way he put it. Someone suggested he hadn’t won and Wes didn’t discount that but noted that, for whatever their reasons, the Democratic leadership chose not to contest the election at the time when it would have mattered....It was an interesting little exchange. Take from it what you will.
Really, really sweet incident at the bar where he met us...Some of the attendees had been sitting at a table eating before Wes and Gert arrived. They had bumper stickers and buttons. When the man waiting on them saw the stickers, he asked, is that General Wesley Clark? A European, he said he’d served under Wes in Kosovo and went on and on about what a wonderful, great and smart man he is. When the man was told that Wes would actually be there, he literally started shaking in excitement. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. "I’ll shave my head right now for a chance to meet General Clark!" And he did get to meet him, shake his hand, and ask him a couple of questions, although he didn’t have to shave his head. Very touching to see the effect that Wes had on this man....Sweet.
It was a very nice little conversation and one got the impression Wes would have stood there for hours in discussion with us but he had other places to go. I think he met with some high school students before the event at the Y. He made sure we all knew the importance of the www.stopiranwar.com website, thanked us for helping to spread the word, for being there and said he’d see us down the block at the Y.
Then dinner and onto the Y event with Wes and Amy: "General Wesley K. Clark on War: Past, Present and Future."
It figured to be interesting as Amy has not always been, shall we say, kind to Clark but, although I imagine she’ll take some issues with some of his answers and comments, she seemed respectful and congenial enough. In fact, one Clarkie I know who knew nothing about Goodman at all got the impression that she loved Clark. I wouldn’t go that far but she did listen to him, let him speak at length and he did get a few smiles out of her.
They started by discussing the General Series books that Wes has been editing. It was interesting to hear the depth and breadth of Clark’s knowledge on things....At one point, when he got to the last book to be discussed, Grant, he feared that he was taking too much time. "Do you want to do Grant?" he asked, "or am I going too slow on these?" The audience chuckled as did Amy. She asked him to go through Grant quickly and then they’d move on to other things.
When he was speaking of Ike and all of the times that Ike said no to using force in various instances when he was pushed to do so, Amy brought up the 1953 coup against Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran under Eisenhower’s watch. Wes said, well, Ike made mistakes too. He said that one of the mistakes the US consistently makes is thinking that we can go into these other countries and change their governments, especially in the Middle East. When Amy brought up British Petroleum, Wes said that if there were no oil in the Middle East, it would be like Africa, where no one is running to go in and intervene. He brought up our creating the Muhajedeen to keep Soviets out of Afghanistan and spoke of unintended consequences that always arise with the use of force...and so you must always use force only, only, only as a last resort. (It was a phrase we heard quite a lot during the conversation.)
She asked him what he thought of these Generals who run for President, which got a hearty laugh from the audience and a big smile from Wes. "It’s happened before," he said. "Will it happen again?" "It might." Applause and laughter all around.
He spoke of how running for President is a lot about celebrity and was even in the time of George Washington...
They spoke of Ike and the MIC and Wes spoke of how Ike spoke against but also created the military-industrial complex. He said Ike was right to warn us of it.
Amy brought up Wes’ website and he very deliberately spelled out the address for the audience. Amy thought the lead up to confrontation with Iran was a replay of the lead up to Iraq. Wes said it’s not an exact repeat. He said that in 2002 we should have been worried about Iran instead of Iraq but that the Administration had made the decision to go after Iraq. He told the story of walking through the Pentagon about 10 days, I think, after 9/11 and being told the decision had been to go to war with Iraq, even though there was no evidence connecting them to 9/11. Then, when he went back a couple of weeks later, when we were bombing Afghanistan, the guy tried to show him that infamous classified document listing the 7 countries we were going to invade in 5 years. I’ve heard this story many times but I guess there are some who still haven’t, for when he said that, the woman next to me actually gasped and shook her head in disbelief. Cute bit though...Wes spoke of seeing that guy years later and bringing up the incident. "I never showed you that!" he cried. Amy jokingly asked, "What did you say his name was?"
He said Iran saw the US presence in Iraq both a threat and a blessing...A blessing because we took out Saddam for them but a threat because we may be coming after them next...So they have an interest in interfering and keeping us bogged down in Iraq.
He said Bush doesn’t want to talk to Iran because they fear alienating part of their political base and also because they don’t want to legitimate this government that they’re trying to overthrow. He said if we were in Iran, we’d think we were already at war with the US as the US has stated that they need regime change, that we’ve asked for $75 million from Congress to do it. He also said that we were possibly supporting, or at least cognizant of and encouraging, terrorist groups that were infiltrating and blowing things up inside Iran. He again said that, although this Administration is moving toward a confrontation, force must be used only as a last, last, last resort, that there is a military option, but it’s not a good one.
Amy asked him about Sy Hersh’s article. Someone had asked him about it at the pre-event get together and he said, unfortunately, he hadn’t had a chance to read it yet. She mentioned he’d just been in Saudi Arabia and he said that the Saudis have a big stake in the outcome in Iraq and they don’t trust our judgment as they’ve not been impressed with our competence in Iraq.
He spoke then of how we could possibly shoot our way out of Iraq, just pack up and leave in a process that would probably take three or four months, shooting as we go, but then the Saudis will go in and hook up with Al Qaeda to help fight the Shias.
Amy asked (as had someone at the pre-event) if he knew who the Generals were who were threatening to resign if we invaded Iran. He said, no, and he didn’t want to. He said he was encouraged by the fact that these Generals were speaking out, were asking these questions of themselves, whether they could accept doing this.
Amy asked about Lt. Watada. Wes said he felt that the Lt. was making a personal courageous statement and he supported his right to refuse to go but that he also supported the government bringing charges against him, because you needed to have an Army that worked and the only way to do that was to have discipline. If it’s not illegal, you got to follow orders....and he brought up the point that, although the Iraq War is illegitimate, it’s not illegal. It was authorized by the US Congress and UN. But Watada’s case was a moral, not a legal case. And he made a good point that it was precisely because Watada was facing consequences that his stand was so courageous. If there are no consequences, it’s a lot easier to take a stand.
Amy said it was significant that a General was saying that this was a courageous stand...Was it up to the people who were being sent to Iraq to stop this if the politicians won’t? Wes said that we needed courage from our leaders in government, the Generals, the Congress....And he spoke of how Congress could put pressure on the President using all of their powers to block him on other things...I think he also elaborated on this on Stephanie Miller yesterday AM.
He didn’t agree that funding should be cut off, that we had to focus on getting the strategy changed, simply cutting off funding would solve nothing, would not end the misery in Iraq or restore any lost lives. He said he’d send a high level diplomatic team into he region to have "no holds barred, no preconditions discussions" with Iran and Syria.
Amy asked if he thought Guantanamo Bay should be closed...."Absolutely," he declared with no hesitation. He said the first thing to do is to repeal the Military Commissions Act. He said the America he knows doesn’t detain people indefinitely without charges, doesn’t condone torture. Then he said we should create an international tribunal and find out who should be brought to trial and who should be released.
When Amy asked if he thought Bush should be impeached, he said Congress should complete full investigations into why we went to war with Iraq, did the Administration misuse the intelligence, etc.
She asked if Rumsfeld should be tried for war crimes. He said he’d like to see the evidence. And he went on to say that Al Gonzalez was involved in the authoring of some outrageous memos regarding the definition of torture and that Bush accepted implicitly in a signing statement, I think he said, in 2005, that he would use whatever methods were appropriate or necessary. He said that there was some high level condoning of the actions and that he felt it was a violation of international and American law. He noted that there’s always been mistreatment of prisoners in war but that America has never done so as a deliberate policy.
An audience member asked if there should be a commission formed to find out where all of the missing Iraq money went. "Absolutely!"
Another audience member asked if this war will be going on 10 years from now. He said that he suspects it will go on at least as long as Bush is President. He said it is possible that there will be a time when we could draw down forces and leave 20,000 there with no permanent bases to help keep stability...but that the current strategy is terrible and it would need to change, we’d need to work with Iran and Syria to make this happen...And he mentioned that the Administration had finally said that they would talk with Iran and Syria but it was too little and way too late.
Amy asked about Jimmy Carter’s book and Wes said he hadn’t yet read it. He did speak of how the US has to lead in helping resolve the Israel/Palestine conflict. He blames Bush for the problems because this Administration has done nothing to lead in the resolution of the conflict. He said he absolutely believes the Palestinians should have a state and that it’s clear what the solution is, that we’ve known for 30 years. He said we’ve got to get the fighting stopped and that it requires a strong government in Washington that’s not afraid to take risks for peace. I liked that line "a government not afraid to take risks for peace."
He was asked by an audience member about running and said he hadn’t said he won’t. He said running for President is about celebrity and branding. Then you need a solid organization and need to be able to raise a lot of money and that it’s a full time preoccupation. He said he thought it was very early to start a campaign....that he didn’t know how long people would stay interested.
Amy asked him what he was waiting for....and he answered, and this is a direct quote: "I’m waiting for several different preconditions which I’m not at liberty to discuss." He said he thinks about it every single day....Then he spoke at length about the ‘04 campaign and what went wrong and how he got into it...the draft, Charlie Rangel calling, Jimmy Carter calling and finally Joe Biden calling in early September. He really felt that the American people didn’t get to know him, that a lot of his staff didn’t really know him and so didn’t communicate that to the American people. And he went into detail about a lot of his very extensive and varied life experience.
He said he was privileged to be part of the race and that he campaigned hard for John Kerry and that this country would be in a lot better shape had John Kerry been in the White House the last few years....
And then he said, another direct quote here, "I learned a lot in that race. So, when you ask me, when am I going to declare, do I have plans...Trust me."
Then Amy wanted to ask a tough question....She asked him if he regretted the bombing of RTS when he was Supreme Allied Commander. In one of those honest answers that Amy probably didn’t like much, he said no, he didn’t regret it because it was part of the Serb command control network and that the Serbs had been warned in advance but that Milosevich made sure there were civilians there so that civilians would be killed. He disagreed with Amy’s contention that it was a civilian target. He said he respected Amnesty’s right to have their say but it was investigated and found to be a legitimate target and not a war crime. He regretted the fact that civilians were killed but that these things happen in war and that’s why you have to be so careful when using force. He said it was a tragedy and then spoke of another incident where they bombed what was thought to be a Serbian police station and killed 80 Albanian prisoners who were being held there in the process. He said he regrets every single innocent who died and he prayed every night that no innocents would be killed. He brought up the incident where three school children were killed and he got the letter from one of the children’s grandfather saying he’d never forgive him and he’d kill him. I’ve seen Wes speak of this before. It’s something that bothers him still. He said he thought we fought as humanely as possible in Kosovo but still civilians were killed. That’s what happens in war.
Amy asked if cluster bombs should be banned and, in another answer sure to disturb Amy and some others I’m sure, he said he thought there was a time when cluster bombs were actually the most humane weapon available for a situation but you have to control their use very carefully. He’d spoken about this at the pre-event as well, that sometimes, in spite of the horridness, they are the best option if force must be used.
He said that people against war often attack the weapons of war. He said he’d like to get rid of land mines. He said he’d participated in getting rid of laser blinding weapons. He said he’d like to get rid of nuclear weapons. (Yay!) But he still felt there were times where force had a place in international affairs, unfortunately. He’d like to work to make it so that it wouldn’t but we’re not there yet....
And that was about it....All in all, a very interesting night. I noticed the man two seats over shaking his head in agreement most of the night and Wes got a good reception.
There's actually much more to say. I know others were there...Maybe they can add....
On a final note, he really is very worried about Iran...Please do whatever you can to get the word out about the President’s moves toward a confrontation and the stopiranwar.com website.