GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: You know, when I was testifying in September 2002 in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee, they asked me about the initial draft of the resolution and it said, and he was authorized to take…it was going to give the president the authority to take action in Iraq and in the region as necessary. And, I said ‘I don’t believe that region needs to be there’ and Senator Warner came down to see me afterwards – he was then the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said, he said ‘young general,’ he said ‘you’re too…probably too young to remember this,’ he said ‘but the Vietnam war was lost because they had a secret bombing campaign in Laos and Cambodia,’ he said ‘and when Congress found out about it, it killed all the support for the war,’ he said ‘so we don’t want to do anything in secret here, we want it authorized up front.’ And you know, my answer was ‘I don’t think we need to do anything in secret because I don’t think we need to do anything to these countries.’ And so I said ‘I recommend you take it out of the resolution.’ It never got put in to the final resolution. It was a trial balloon, but it indicated to me the White House’s intent to escalate this beyond Iraq.
<snip>
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well in my experience, if you want a war, you can have one. Because people will fight you. And so if we…if we as America believe that conflict with Iran is inevitable, that there’s an attitude of sort of ‘bring it on, let’s get it over with,’ we’ll have that conflict. We won’t like that conflict because it won’t be easily resolved. It’s unlikely that the Iranian government will…would ever sign a formal surrender document to us. We don’t have enough troops to occupy Iran. If we did, we would find out that it’s a polyglot country just like many of the countries in the region with many minority groups and ethnic pulls and tugs and it would be a pain in the neck to try to occupy a nation of 75 million people who were browbeaten into submission. We don’t need that. And um…so
Stephanie Miller: Well General, what is your take on what Democrats can
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: We’ve got to back away from…we’ve got…we’ve got to take another look at the broad thrust of where we’re headed. Somehow we’ve got to go into the region and change people’s minds and say ‘look, we have choice…we have free will, we’re human beings. We don’t have to have war.’
Stephanie Miller: Right
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: So why are we having war?
Stephanie Miller: Right. General, what’s your take on what the Democrats can or should do to stop this? I feel like our intervention has failed and the president’s going out drinking again and we’re in the back seat and he’s driving. What can we do, in your opinion?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I’d like to see the Democrats use the power of Congress. And I’d like to see them use it this way: I’d like to see them find a way to force the President to confront the strategic issues
Stephanie Miller: Right
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: not the tactical issues. Imagine this way…imagine it this way: you’re on a ship and let’s say it’s…I don’t know, November of 19-whatever it was, 12? Um, and the ship is sailing from let’s say Liverpool
Stephanie Miller: Oh my gosh, Commissioner Gordon’s calling. That’s a…
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: and when it sails…and it sails from Liverpool and um, you see in the darkness approaching this looming iceberg and you run to the captain and you say ‘I have a premonition that we might strike this i…’ he says ‘don’t worry, this ship’s unsinkable.’ He said ‘anyway, what I’m more worried about is whether we should move these chairs from the aftdeck to the foredeck
Stephanie Miller: That’s exactly it
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: And, then the passengers, he said ‘I’m going to ask the opinion of the passengers,’ he said ‘attention all passengers,’ and there’s a large debate about the chairs. Meanwhile the ship’s plowing ahead in the seas towards its destiny and that’s my concern,
Stephanie Miller: mm-hm
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: is that the United States Congress should not get drawn down into the issue of how many brigades are on the streets of Baghdad. That is not the appropriate issue
Stephanie Miller: yep
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: for the United States Congress.
http://securingamerica.com/node/2123The issue is, of course, the Iceberg towards which the American ship of state is headed, and it can't be resolved militarily by adding or taking away troops from Baghdad. When he says "That is not the appropriate issue for the United States Congress," what he is doing is asking the Congress to step up and confront the administration with the much larger issues...not the micromanagement of the war, but the entire policy in the region.
We are in deep water, folks.
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