Darn, I missed it. I never watch Scarb--can't stand him. And wasn't on line to hear about it first.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4540825/We‘ve got tonight former presidential candidate General Wesley Clark. And he knows a lot about leading coalitions into battle. Of course, he was the NATO commander during the war in Kosovo and has also been a leading critic of the president‘s handling of the war on terror. And he‘s in SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY tonight.
General, thank you so much for being back with us.
And I got to get your take. I know you are not a big fan of the president‘s foreign policy plans, but what did you make of the Socialists winning in Spain after the terror attack this past weekend?
WESLEY CLARK (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, it was a surprise, Joe.
I can‘t fully support your interpretation of it as appeasement or as a breaking of an alliance with America. First of all, I have known a lot of people in Spain on both sides of the political fence, and I think there‘s a lot of people over there who love the United States and will always support the United States and what we stand for, no matter which party is in office there.
But I do think this, that there is a legitimate disagreement about how to handle most effectively the war on terror. And we have had that disagreement out in this country. In fact, I have been on your show before. And right after 9/11, I was one of those who argued that you had to use the full array of international law, intelligence, police, information-sharing, as well as the military, to go after these networks and break them up.
And I was one of those who said that the attack on Iraq was a mistake because it was a distraction from the war on terror. Now, we are still waiting to see exactly all the levels of proof that will come out of this attack on Spain. But if we operate on the assumption that this is an offshoot of al Qaeda, then you have to ask yourself, well, what‘s the lesson here on this? And the lesson seems to me what we have been saying all along. The military is but one part in the campaign on terror.
You cannot win the war on terror with special ops, Delta Force and stealth bombers alone. You can‘t win it by taking down states. You have to have good intelligence. You have to harmonize laws. You have to bring nations together, and you have to strengthen their abilities to defend themselves internally.
In this case, I am not sure we have done enough to help the Spanish defend themselves internally. And I think this also sends a very powerful message to us in the United States. Right after 9/11, Don Rumsfeld said, well, the best defense is a good offense. And that was the excuse for going after Iraq, I guess, but in fact it‘s not enough to have a good offense. You have to have effective homeland security.
And in this country, we have got lots of our homeland security assets that just aren‘t very well protected.
SCARBOROUGH: Well, General, you know, the thing that concerns me—and, certainly, you are exactly right. The majority of people in Spain opposed the war in Iraq.
But what concerns me, and I know it‘s concerning a lot of leaders in Europe and across the world tonight, is the fact that the Socialists were behind, well behind, before the attack. Everybody expected the Popular Party to win the election in Spain. And the second these explosions went off on these commuter trains in Madrid, it changed the entire outlook of the election.
And so doesn‘t that send a very clear message to the terrorists, if you blow off bombs in Italy, in the United Kingdom and in other capitals across Europe, you can affect democratic elections?
CLARK: Well, a lot of things affect democratic elections.
I think one of the messages it may send is that the government that takes over in Spain is going to be a lot tougher on homeland security in Spain than the Aznar government was able to be, for whatever reason. I remember being in the Pentagon about a little over a year ago and seeing an unclassified chart on the wall in the briefing room that said, two greatest countries with problems in the war on terror, two of our allies, the two greatest problems, Germany and Spain, I guess because we weren‘t getting the right levels of cooperation, the laws, the intelligence sharing, the police cooperation, the way the court systems work, everything.
It wasn‘t harmonized. But instead of putting the full effort in that, we have been distracted for almost two years with the effort to get into Iraq, to take down Saddam Hussein, and change the government there. We have got our armed forces totally committed with the problem of Iraq. And so the question is, can we do more? I think we can, and I think we have to in this country, and we have to with our allies.
We have got to build a strong anti-terrorism alliance that starts with the idea that you harmonize the law, start with the definition of terrorism, what constitutes terrorism, then what‘s the evidence that proves it, and then what are the means that are legal to establish that evidence, what are the standards of proof of the crime, and get that harmonized all across the West and work together, so our societies are safe. We have to do that.
SCARBOROUGH: General, one final question. Obviously, as you know, again, you know NATO as well as anybody in America right now. We have got a lot of support still, Britain, Poland, Hungary, the Czechs, Portugal, Denmark, Netherlands, Italy, and Rumania and several other nations. How do you think Spain backing away and leaving Iraq is going to impact all these other allies in NATO?
Right now, the majority of NATO countries support our efforts in Iraq and are helping. Do you think other countries may follow Spain and leave Iraq?
CLARK: Well, Joe, I just got to take an issue with the sort of fundamental assumption of your question.
Your assumption is that Iraq is part of the war on terror. But let‘s go back on that. Saddam Hussein was not part of 9/11. He did not have any significant amount of weapons of mass destruction. He was the last country to want to cooperate with al Qaeda. He was considered an enemy by al Qaeda. We went into Iraq. And the terrorists that we are finding there are the ones who come in to attack us. So I think it‘s important that we have our allies with us. We want to be successful in Iraq because now we are there, and it‘s not going to make us safer to come tumbling out.
But I think, working with our NATO allies, we can construct both an effective means of going after terrorism and a sustainable strategy for bringing success to Iraq. But I think it‘s dangerous to confuse the two. It‘s going to take a lot of different efforts to make us successful and safe in the war against terrorism.
SCARBOROUGH: All right.
CLARK: It‘s a lot more than Iraq, and we cannot keep confusing the American public by saying, they are one and the same. They are not.
SCARBOROUGH: All right, General, we are going to have to leave it there. And, of course, as you know, I disagree with you on that. I believe it is an important part of the war on terror, but I have got great respect for what you have done in your service to our country and what you are doing right now.
As always, thanks a lot for being with us.
CLARK: All right, thank you, Joe.
SCARBOROUGH: All right.
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