Clark: "You really can't win militarily"

He is answering questions from bloggers on his website. He will answer more question at 2pm CST tomorrow. Here is what was posted today by Clark...

Here's my thinking. This #47580
Posted by Wes Clark on December 6, 2005 - 5:31pm.
Here's my thinking. This is really the first time I have tried to formulate this, so consider this as a draft that I may have to come back and amend somewhat. But let me put the bottom line up front: No, it's not yet too late to try to straighten out the policy and strategies in Iraq and the region.
The first window closes when we've lost the ability to influence the Iraqis politically. Because you really can't win militarily. So, the trick is to use the military presence and the economic asssitance to create the political leverage on the Iraqis to change the constitution, reduce the sectarianism, readmit the insurgents, etc....when there's no ability left to influence them, then the first window has closed....(for example, there's a four month window after the election when the consitution can be changed by majority vote, which may be one of the key factors driving the timing)...at that point, we have to look at our other interests in the region, and assess whether staying in Iraq helps or harms them...those other interests include the terrorists, (Al Qaeda), and Iran's nuclear and hegemonic ambitions, and whether our presence there is overall doing us more harm than good. The second window closes if they tell us to leave. At that point, staying is tantamount to invading.

As for a fallback position, #47589
Posted by Wes Clark on December 6, 2005 - 5:42pm.
As for a fallback position, what I've laid out are three sets of military tasks that must be accomplished in order to get this right. As the tasks are done, it is possible to draw down troops...but if the Iraqis ask us to leave, then we would simply execute a phased withdrawal, absent other compelling reaons to stay and recognizing that to remain inside a sovereign state against its will is tantamount to a continuing invasion and unsuported by law.
To remove 160,000 troops and alll the millions of tons of stuff will take months, by the way. Our retrograde from Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War took three or four months for the troops and more than a year for the equipment. And although we had three times as many troops there, we probably didnt have as much "stuff" Soldiers are living in barracks, and they have PX's and dining facilities, and some have stuff in their rooms...and units have tons of logistics like spares and tools that have to go along. Pulling back won't be that easy....

The window hasn't closed #47584
Posted by Wes Clark on December 6, 2005 - 5:35pm.
The window hasn't closed yet. It closes when we've lost the ability to influence the Iraqis politically, or when they ask us to leave. Remember, we have interests in the region besides Iraqi democracy, including how we go after the terrorists, and what the impact of our pullback might be on them, and also the impact of US presence and actions on Iran.
I know people are getting impatient, but, we have to drive the policy by our needs and capabilities in the region, not by domestic US concerns....and there is still the opportunity to achieve something more positive than could be accomplished by simply withdrawing.

Will be back tomorrow #47678
Posted by Wes Clark on December 6, 2005 - 7:56pm.
Thank you for the great questions. I will be back tomorrow at 2pm CT.

http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/2914

General Clark will be online at CCN 12/6 @ 2PM
Start: Dec 7 2005 - 2:00pm
End: Dec 7 2005 - 3:00pm
description:
For the sake of our country and our troops serving in harm's way, it's important that we continue speaking out about Iraq, holding the Bush Administration accountable for their failed policy, and doing everything we can to change course and salvage victory as quickly as possible.
General Clark will be online to answer questions posed by members of the SecuringAmerica community at 2pm CST Wednesday, December 8, read the complete version of General Clark's Iraq op-ed from the New York Times (below) and join us on Wednesday afternoon
Location:
http://www.securingamerica.com/ccn

Dean is right. The window closed last year sometime.

It shouldn't have, but it really did.

I would seriously listen to Murtha now. He remembers. He was your superior than.

WE CANNOT win a war in which we are only the support. WE CANNOT win a civil war any more than the British could intervine in our civil war in 1862.

This is not our fight, it is that simple.

General CLark, listen to those kids. It is, and has been a civil war.

NOT OUR FIGHT!

God general, the day you lose the vision, I think I am a goner.

I do think you General are one one of the brightest people this country has ever produced. You know better!!!

General CLark, those kids, they are your kids, too! You commanded them.

They really do believe in you, I know. AND SO DO I.

The best day to admit a mistake is the first day. We learned that the hard way in Viet Nam. I do think there is a hard fight coming for us. How can we do this now??

General Clark, for Gods sake - stop the madness here. We do probably have a real fight coming - I am so sorry to say. I think you know, too.

You are the end of the line for sanity for a lot of us.

As it is now, I go with Dean. I think you do, too.

Joe

besides simply choosing to believe that it did? At the very least there is still a four month window where the constitution can be changed to form a more inclusive government.

Dean and Clark are both right that an exclusively military war in Iraq can never be won, because the root of the problem is a political one.

and leaving the military in Iraq to "encourage" them to act in a way that serves the interests of the US (rather than of Iraq or iran or whomever).

...to "serve the interests of the US"?

There is not one mainstream Democratic leader, certainly not one with any chance at all of winning the nomination, who does not advocate using the military to "serve the interests of the US." That's what the military exists for--just like every other agency of the US government.

Not one.

If you think that's imperialism, fine. I don't agree--that's a major reason I'm a Democrat and not a Green or one of a number of other third parties.

But regardless of your party affiliation, it's intellectually dishonest to single out Clark as being more imperialistic than any other leading Democrat. The only difference between them is how the various leaders define US interests.

Clark believes that it's a primary US interest to be a responsible member of the world community. One of his harshest and most repeated criticisms of the Bush administration has been their unwillingness to work with international institutions or abide by international law. In his pre-war congressional testimony, he literally pounded the table as he argued against the rush to war out of "frustration" with the UN and our alliances. Nor is it just talk with Clark. After the Kosovo War, he voluntarily submitted to judgement by the International Court in the Hague. He was probably the first significant public figure to speak out about US violation of the Geneva Conventions (before Kerry, and long before McCain); he works behind the scenes with people like Seymour Hersh to encourage them to expose what is going on; he's spent WesPAC dollars to host and advertise a petition (http://ga4.org/campaign/prisonerabuse) to John Warner and the SASC, demanding a real investigation into the abuse.

Clark is probably the least likely of any future Democratic president to employ military force unilaterally, or as anything but a last resort. If he ever does, it will be to "serve the interests of the US" but he will do everything in his power to ensure our interests are not in conflict with the interests of other affected nations or peoples. I sincerely doubt there are many leading Democrats who even understand the importance of that goal, much less would be as capable of achieving it.

But I'll try.

Because I listen to my kid. It closed alright.

A year and a half ago, about, the protests in front of the gates to the army and air force base in Mosul was in the hundreds. It was in the thousands when he finish the tour. Keeps increasing.

It closed because it is clear they really do not want us there.

We cannot, nobody can, fight some one elses civil war for them.

Murtha got it right.

Joe

Here's a quote from Morning Sedition:

"He's a very bright guy, and he's written a very interesting piece which I think is the key to how you get out of Iraq without endangering our troops or maximizing the terrorists' ability to cause mayhem over there. And I know Jack talked to him before he came out with his redeployment strategy. We need to redeploy our troops, the Guardsmen need to come home, there need to be a group sent to Kuwait to be on hand for the terrorist attacks, and there needs to be a group sent to Afghanistan so we can do the job there which the government wants us to do, and then we'll leave a few troops in Iraq over 2006 in order to stabilize the situation there which the President's made a huge mess of. So, I think that's a reasonable plan--I think Democrats ought to coalesce around. I think we can do that. It's gradual. The Republicans have practically signed onto it in the Senate. They know their Commander in Chief has got us into a big problem here. And you start to see them peeling away. You saw the Senate pass a resolution that 2006 should be the year of transition . Well, that was a step in the right direction for the Republicans to take."

Dean has supported Kerry's withdrawl plan as well.

Dean stood up for Murtha, as did Kerry, when he was being attacked. But the plan he thinks people should gather around is Kolb's.

According to an article in the WaPo:

DNC spokeswoman Karen Finney said Dean's comments were taken out of context. Dean, she said, meant the war was unwinnable unless the Bush administration adopts a new strategy.

That's essentially the same thing Clark has been saying.

As for not driving policy by domestic US concerns (does that mean "democratic will"?), what about driving it according to domestic iraqi concerns? 70-80% of Iraqis want us out of their country, right? Who are we really waiting to tell us to leave if we don't care what the majority of iraqis want us to do?

When clark says we need to "change course" to "salvage victory" it sounds to me like he's saying we need to do a better job of reaching the goal the Republicans and the imperialists had when they sent US troops over there in the first place. The "change' is in doing a better job of getting what Bush promised. Is that really a change?

The only goal Clark has is to stop the entire fabric of the Middle East from dissolving into escalating regional warfare and conflict. That is very different than the Bush Administration goals which Clark opposed precisely because it would lead to escalating regional warfare and conflict. People can argue about whether Clark's "goal" now is at all attainable, or attainable at what cost, but to equate the two is far worse than merely misleading.

Whether or not there were oil in Iraq there are still massive numbers of human beings involved, and humans also fight and kill each other in very large numbers for things far less tangible than oil. Like religion for example. Clark did not want to invade Iraq. He doesn't "want" to be there now. It wasn't his choice to "impose a Democracy" through force in that region, Oil or no Oil.

And I will say one thing about hollow Imperialist slogans. No one wants a spiraling regional war that will completely disrupt world supplies of Oil. Even International leftists who want to protect worker rights and environmental standards and the full sovereignty of indigenous peoples over their own resources, even leftists who want a higher gas tax and who want to wean ourselves of dependence on Oil, no one wants an immediate severe Oil Crisis. That would kill people as surely as bullets, with economies thrown into depressions world wide that throw people onto the streets and send the cost of fuel for heating skyrocketing. And that's not even talking about possible nuclear flash points in the Mid East.

I will miss some of this online debate as I need to be out for much of the day.

Rather than debate this hear, I'm going to keep an eye on your response to Argh here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2293795&mesg_id=2296445

I think Argh is making my points but is doing a better job of it.

friend.

Listen, people.....Clark knows the score on this debacle....but he is also aware of the threats to the region if Iran gains more influence.
He just came back from the region and it's really of prime concern to him.
Nobody else seems to want to go there. Clark knows all about "windows" and pullouts. He's trying to light a fire to get some pressure on Bushco to try to use the next few months to get a few changes in the apprach so chaos can be minimized.

But our Democrats don't get the big picture it seems and don't want to unify in a message to pressure for some moves that MIGHT help the situation long term. We're not talking "victory" here (Iraqi troops taking over) but avoiding the Iranian influence from taking over Iraq and further destabilization in the region.

Clark has been warning about losing opportunity for months and months and now the time is near when things really start going down the tubes IN THE BACKGROUND, because we will never hear about Iran slowly taking over Iraq via the Shias. And I guess the Democrats won't want to go there either, until it is WAY too late....

A pox on both their houses, Bushco and the Democrats who can't get a unified voice and educate the public as to what the hell is really going on.

Gen Clark said this in his speech. If anyone knows, he does. Here is what would happen with an immediate withdrawel, without diplomacy with surrounding countries.


Sept 2005

".... And I want you to picture what would happen if we announced we're coming out. Now just imagine it, OK. The president, right after Labor Day, you know they always say never announce anything new before Labor Day, the president comes on national TV and says, "I've heard your thoughts, my fellow countrymen, we've lost 2,000 American's, spent 200 billion dollars and we're coming out. We're coming home."

Well the men and women in the armed forces can do it. It will be a fighting withdrawal because the insurgents will be on the heels of the American columns as they come out. I can picture our men and women in those humvees and the dump trucks. You can see them taking fire and asking, "Should I shoot back, if I shoot back who's in that building?" I can see a long and bloody retreat. It will take several weeks to get out of there, four or five weeks. Or if you stage it, it will be bloodier and more difficult for longer. The insurgents will claim they won. But that claim will be disputed by Al Qaeda. They'll say that they drove us out.

And the people who helped us in Iraq will be targeted. They already are targeted but they've got some assistance and support. That will go away quickly. These people will be running for their lives. 200, 300, 500, 800,000, a million. Everybody who ever talked to an American. We don't know where the boundary will be. But it won't be pretty.


And when it's said that we are coming out, the political process that we've put in place will start to come apart, naturally. People are already preparing. There's plenty of private militias there. They've got scores to settle, territory to gain, cleansing to do, resources to capture and I'm sure the Kurds will decide, you know they aren't Arabs anyway, they'll go their own way. So I would expect a pretty rapid recourse not only to civil war but regional conflict, if we were to pull out and say 'we're coming home.' Now, that's my scenario. It reduces American prestige, influence and power all around the world.

other than the threat of military invasion and the presence of military bases on six continents.

And we need to stop thinking that backing down from a fight that we shouldn't have started is unmasculine and bad for our national self-image.

Respecting the decisions of courts of law, recognizing a world in which sovereign nations have equal bargaining power, a recognition that everyone deserves their own home and fig tree (ie, Jim Wallis's argument about micah's prophecy) -- that's what will give America prestige, influence and (moral) power.

http://securingamerica.com/tsap/050906

Conference: Terrorism, Security & America's Purpose: Towards a More Comprehensive Strategy (September 6, 2005)
Remarks by General Wesley Clark: Former Supreme Allied Commander, NATO and former candidate for President of the United States
Watch the videoclip

Conference: Terrorism, Security & America's Purpose: Towards a More Comprehensive Strategy
September 6, 2005
Washington, D.C.

Just about everything he says makes a lot of sense to me at least.

snips

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5546497

Wesley Clark, another Democrat who hopes to be redecorating the Oval in 2009, took the whole thing one big step further with an editorial in Tuesday's New York Times titled "The Next Iraq Offensive." The article detailed a series of troop maneuvers that would redeploy American and Iraqi forces along the borders with Syria and Iran. Clark warned that Iraq was becoming a Shia-dominated buffer state that serves to protect Iran, and that a radical shift in tactics must be undertaken to avoid the creation of an Iran/Iraq superstate. At bottom, Clark said the United States must remain in Iraq, and that his plan was one that could achieve victory in this conflict.

It was a cogent and effective argument centered around an undeniable fact: this occupation has empowered Shia fundamentalism in Iraq, said fundamentalism being deeply tied to Shia fundamentalism in Iran. This union poses a danger to the Mideast region and, in the long run, a danger to the United States both at home and abroad. There is one significant dent in Clark's thinking, however. In making his argument, he accepted a number of premises that should be rejected as deeply flawed.

Here's the deal: we invaded Iraq to establish a permanent, muscular military presence in the Middle East; we invaded Iraq to take control of their petroleum reserves for the next hundred years, a pretty little piggy bank in a world where oil is becoming harder to find; we invaded Iraq so we could use our military presence there to attack and invade several other countries in the region; we invaded Iraq to establish strategic positioning for any economic and/or resource struggles with China and Russia; we invaded Iraq because administration officials who think they are members of the Likud Party believed this war would serve to protect and defend the state of Israel; we invaded Iraq so a bunch of military contractors with umbilical ties to the administration could get paid.

All of this is enshrined in the codicils of the Project for a New American Century, the organization <a href="http://www.newamericancentury.org /">whose membership rolls include Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Abrams, Libby and a pile of others who have crafted our insane foreign policy and thrown us into this mess. This is what they wanted. They've been planning it for years, well before they ever got into the White House with Bush. For them, victory had nothing to do with defeating Hussein or fighting terrorism or establishing democracy. Victory means we stay in Iraq forever.

Period. End of file.

When Wesley Clark and these other Democratic aspirants talk about "winning" in Iraq before we get out, they accept a premise that should be rejected out of hand. For the architects of this war, victory has already been achieved, and all arguments in favor of remaining in Iraq until impossible goals are reached strengthen that victory. There is no democracy at the end of this tunnel, only more tunnel.

When Wesley Clark and these other Democratic aspirants talk about "winning" in Iraq, they buy into the fantasy that there is anything to win. The invasion and occupation created a breeding ground for terrorism, immeasurably strengthened the resolve of Islamic fanaticism, ravaged the US treasury, and has seriously weakened our ability to defend ourselves against other global threats.

he says "not failing". I think, to rephrase an old 60's song (Strawberry Alerm Clock), Clark sees "little to win, but something to lose". I don't think Bush and Clark are talking about the same thing at all. Clark never talks about "Victory", he talks about trying to leave an Iraq behind that isn't deeply embroiled in a civil war that threatens to engulf the entire region. The fact that Clark is concerned about "failing" in Iraq does not mean that he bought or is buying into Bush's vision of "winning". That is a very misleading leap of logic.

in Clark knowing what in the heck he is talking about. The insinuation that Clark's position is based on 08 aspirations is total B.S. Pitt has no grasp on what is transpiring in the Middle East.

08 run is a baseless smear. What facts would even support such a contention? Clark put his career on the line to do the right thing in Bosnia because he did not want to see another Rwanda. Anyone with an ounce of sense and objectivity who watched the 60 Minutes interview where Clark discussed this matter and who did his homework on Clark would realize that Clark is NOT another self-serving politician who only wants to do what is best for Clark.

As far as "The invasion and occupation created a breeding ground for terrorism, immeasurably strengthened the resolve of Islamic fanaticism, ravaged the US treasury, and has seriously weakened our ability to defend ourselves against other global threats" - Clark has been voicing these concerns for eons. Clark buying into a fantasy? No man is perfect but I'll put my money on Clark. What he's forgotten about the Middle East and the lessons of history (if anything) is more than Pitt could ever hope to know.

While everyone is entitled to their opinion, to often opinion pieces (from both the right and left) seem to be devoid of any intellectual honesty.

It's important for people to read these statements by Clark.

That these "answers" without the context of the question to which they replied do not serve him well. Please go and read these answers within the context of the give and take of the questions posed for the real story.

TC

(and I agree with TC that doing so is essential to understand the answers) I think it's valuable to see the entire flow of the conversation. The times of the questions and the replies show that Clark pretty much just went down the line, replying to whatever his bloggers asked for as long as he was available. He didn't cherry-pick questions that would make him look good, and he didn't dodge questions that would make him look bad. And for what it's worth, he was typing his answers himself (altho the WesPAC staff has since cleaned up the typos).

the context (questions, flow) is very important to the answers he gave. This is one time where the context is what makes these answers not only make sense, but far more understandable.

TC

What impression do you think readers might get from reading only the answers that would be different if they read the questions too?

Clark said that the window would shut at the end of this year.
The Army War College told Bush that 450,000 troops were needed in Iraq. 100,000 for the invasion into Iraq, and 350,000 to secure the borders and trane the Iraqi domestic security forces to fight.

Bush wanted a quick and political war, so he went in with 150,000 troops, not enough by far. It would have taken 4 more months or so to get the 450,000 in place. Bush wanted the war as early as possible. He got his war, and we got a huge mess that cannot be cleaned up.

Given that, we have to think this thing through (not stay the course).