General Wesley Clark interviewed by The Texas Blue, 7.04.07
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: For whatever reason, Vice President Cheney and President Bush refuse to talk to Iran. They refuse to talk to Syria. They refuse to commit the adequate resources necessary to bring these warring factions in Iraq together politically. That’s the failure, not a failure of the men and women in our Armed Forces. It’s a failure of the administration’s political leadership, a refusal to do what’s necessary to help our soldiers on the ground….I think they’ve made up their mind that they’re going for regime change in Iran and Syria, therefore they will not talk to them. So, it doesn’t matter what the Generals say about needing a strategy. They tell the Generals, ‘Focus on the military aspect of it.’ But the Generals are responsible for the overall success of the war, and they’re not getting the leadership from Washington, the support from Washington necessary to succeed.
Texas Blue: You have a concern with the burgeoning possible war with Iran. I mentioned we had Jon Soltz on the show, co-founder and chairman of votevets.org, and you’ve worked with him at votevets on the advisory board and on another project called stopirarwar.com. At the time of this interview StopIranWar had collected some 50,000 signatures through netroots activism. How did StopIranWar come to be and how will it work toward the ultimate goal of raising awareness about and possibly preventing a war with Iran?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, what we’ve tried to do with StopIranWar is raise awareness that the Administration is not pursuing the kinds of policies that are required to check Iran’s influence in the region or to dissuade Iran from going after nuclear weapons. They’re feeding Iran’s paranoia. They’re encouraging the hardliners in Iran to be able to point to the west and say they’re out to get us and therefore we’ve got to have nuclear weapons and we’ve got to be tougher in fighting against the Israelis. It’s producing results that are diametrically opposed to those that should be sought by any sensible policy maker and in the end it’s going to present the United States, I’m afraid, with the alternative of either going to war with Iran in an effort to prevent Iran’s gaining nuclear weapons or acquiescing in a very hostile isolated Iran gaining nuclear weapons. We’re going through the charade of the diplomacy, but both the Iranians and the White House are playing at the charade: the White House because it won’t personally at a high level engage directly with Iran; the Iranians because they know what Washington’s hostility is and they wanna go through the motions of diplomacy without giving up their option for a nuclear weapon.
Texas Blue: Do you see a way out of that policywise before the Bush Administration leaves office ?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Probably not except through public pressure but thus far the public pressure’s been neutralized pretty much by the Administration. The Democrats are focused on troops and tactics which is what the Administration wants to talk about in Iraq rather than the larger regional concerns. I’ve tried to elevate the dialogue but haven’t had too much success in that because basically everybody wants to look at the losses of troops in Iraq. Democrats want to say ‘this is terrible, pull the troops out’. The Republicans, at least the Administration, wants to say the surge is probably going to work, give it time. The truth is the surge is a military tactic. It’s not a strategy. To deal with the strategy you have to deal with the nation’s in the region. The Administration has a strategy. It is to overthrow Iran. The strategy’s not working and it’s not going to work but in doing so it’s going to bring us to the brink, if not over the brink, into another war, with Iran.
