Reply #125: Cohen was pissed because Clark was correct, acted upon

[Clark2008]

his decision to get Slobodon out and won.

The problem with Gen. Clark was simple: It was that he was right. Although his public posture was meticulously unrevealing of his own feelings, it was known, and certainly appropriately so when many lives were at risk, that from the beginning he did warn both the Pentagon and the White House privately that, in order to win in Kosovo, more aggressive actions would need to be taken. He began planning for a ground invasion before anybody here would think of it. He warned them of the terrible consequences of failure, such as the destruction of a humiliated NATO.

As British writer Michael Ignatieff explains in the present New Yorker: "Clark had wanted a different approach from the outset. He and his air commanders ... had wanted to 'go downtown' on the first night, hitting power, telephone, command-and-control sites and Milosevic's bunkers."

The simple truth right now is that nobody says that Clark was wrong. In fact, the respected German Gen. Klaus Naumann, just-retired head of the NATO military committee, told a group of us here recently, in his review of the still-unresolved conflict, that "the reluctance to use overwhelming force allowed Slobodan Milosevic to calculate his risks. ... I would press harder for visible preparations and visible planning."

SNIP

I have interviewed Gen. Clark, both in Panama and at his office in Belgium soon after the war started, and I know how careful he has been in everything he has said. As we sat last April in his office in Mons, I kept trying to get him to say something even moderately revealing, but he wouldn't.

In fact, you need only to look at his brilliant testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on July l to see how modulated his words always were -- and how he had been able to explain how difficult this new type of "coalition warfare" was -- but also to accept the reality that it is almost surely the warfare of the future. Most analysts I know are filled with unvarnished admiration for his political skills in keeping the l9-member NATO coalition together.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was jealousy of Clark at the Pentagon. He is too smart, too decent, and above all too clear about what is -- and what isn't. He surely will have a brilliant future. I'm far more worried about us.

Everything points to the fact that, far from getting rid of Gen. Clark, what we really need is to get rid of this jealous bureacratic mentality at the top of our military establishment. For if what they are really saying with these acts is that there is no place for a Wesley Clark in the U.S. armed forces, then we're in deep trouble.

http://wesleyclark.h1.ru/departure.htm#GEN.%20WESLEY%20CLARK%20WAS%20RIGHT (there's an entire collection about the whole bru-ha-ha at this link)