General Wesley Clark on the Charlie Rose Show – 07.26.07
Charlie Rose: Tell me, without doing all the sort of dancing that I might do, say, you know, ‘If you were President what would you do?’ Just tell me what we ought to do.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Got to have a new strategy. The President said he had a new strategy, but he didn’t. He had a new approach militarily on the ground in Iraq. The Iraq problem is part of the regional problem, and you can’t solve Iraq just with military force or just by dealing inside Iraq. Iran’s got a major role and a major voice in the region and inside Iraq. And so, you have to deal with the problem in a coherent way. That means diplomacy, politics and the military. We need to be talking to Iran and Syria and the rest of it, the neighbors of Iraq. We’ve needed, and I’ve been pretty consistent on this for the last three or four years, a regional security forum, a continuing dialog-
Charlie Rose: Okay.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -the ability to harmonize interests.
(snip)
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: This administration had, went into Iraq with the idea that Iraq would be the first of a number of let’s call them dominoes-
Charlie Rose: Right.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -which it could tumble over in the Middle East – Syria, Lebanon and ultimately Iran. We’ve gone for 75 million dollars in funding to promote regime change in Iran. The Iranians are under no illusion about the United States. So, having a dialog between Foreign Ministers to talk about Iraq, it, it doesn’t change the nature of the cold war.
Charlie Rose: What changes the nature of the war?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: A change in U.S. strategy in the region. W-What we should’ve learned out of Iraq is that we’re not for the imposition of our form of democracy at any price. We’re just not for it. What we would do if we could do I think and do it over, is we would work for the sort of gradual change in Iraq that might lead to a fundamental reform without all the destructive anarchy that’s accompanied the U.S. invasion there.
(snip)
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I keep hearing from Washington the administration doesn’t have enough leverage to talk to Iran. Now, think about this for a minute, Charlie. We’re the most powerful nation in the world. All of the international institutions – The World Trade Organization, the UN, the International Monetary Fund, the Group of 8, all those – we either dominate or heavily influence, and that’s what Iran really wants is legitimation. We don’t have enough leverage to talk to Iran, as though if we could just capture five more Iranians in Iraq, that would give us more leverage?
(snip)
Charlie Rose: The President makes a speech and he says, ‘Listen,’ to all, to the Iranian government, you know, in all of its manifestations, ‘We have no interest in changing your regime. That’s not what we want to do. We want to see understanding between the two of us, and we understand what your mission is and what our mission is and how we deal together with big issues that threaten all of us.’
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I think that’s a pretty constructive way to start. I think that’s not enough, but that’s a constructive way to start.
(snip)
Charlie Rose: Okay. Are you then, and you know this is the terminology they all use as you know: ‘We’re going to-’ You know, they all say, everybody says, ‘We’re never going to take the use of force off the table.’ Are you taking it off the table.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: No. No, of course not. You don’t have to take it off the table, but you have to talk to people.
Charlie Rose: So, you say then, if necessary we’ll use force, but hope we can avoid that.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, what you say to them is, ‘Let’s sit down and talk about all the issues,’ and you send a team over like we did in the Balkans that represents the President and the Pentagon and the National Security Council staff and the State Department, and you really talk about the issues – all the issues in the region. And you don’t just talk to the Iranians, but the team goes to the other capitols in the region and talks to other leaders. One of the problems with Iran, of course, is we don’t know exactly who to talk to, because there’s a government and then there’s a shadow government.
(snip)
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: The Iranians still have got that border. They’ve got, this is their home court advantage that we’re playing on. They can infiltrate. There’s no telling how many Iranian agents are inside Iraq. They probably come in all different flavors.
Charlie Rose: What do you think their goal is?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: There’s this-
Charlie Rose: What do you think the Iranian goal-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: They want to be sure that Iraq is, for them, a supportive and friendly country, and then they may want more than that. But if the United States had been invaded by Canada, and then there was regime change in Canada, we’d be pretty interested in figuring out what was going on in Canada and trying to influence it.
Charlie Rose: So, therefore the Iranians have a, have a legitimate interest in what’s going on.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: They’re a, they’re a state in the region just like Israel has a legitimate interest in what’s going on. So does Syria. So does Saudi Arabia. So, you can’t deny Iran’s interest in the region, but what you can do is you can make it come out from being covert to being overt.
Charlie Rose: Okay, you’re saying-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Get it out in the open and talk about it.
Charlie Rose: Yeah. Tell me what policy will prevent the Iranians from an involvement in, on the ground, supplying weapons to whoever they’re going to.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: You must take away their interest in doing that.
Charlie Rose: How do you do that?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: You must give them a voice in what happens in the region. You must end the policy of isolation that’s been put in place against Iran, and until that’s done-
Charlie Rose: Ambassador Crocker says-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -it won’t be, it won’t be effective.
Charlie Rose: Ambassador Crocker says they’ve shown no real interest and initiative in those discussions. That’s what he said.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, they wouldn’t. They’re not interested in the tactical discussions until it reaches the strategic level. They’ve told us this. I was-
Charlie Rose: When does it reach the strategic level?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: When you talk about whether the U.S is after regime change in Iran or not. Now look, the Iranian population’s the most pro-American population in the region. 61%, according to the latest opinion polls in Iran, 61% of the Iranians don’t support their own government.
Charlie Rose: Mm hm.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: So, it’s not like this is a great government. It’s just like, don’t give the government the opportunity to make the United States the enemy.
(snip)
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Iran’s a challenge in the region. Iran floats trial balloons. Iran stimulates problems in Lebanon. Iran-
Charlie Rose: Iran supports Hezbullah-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Absolutely.
Charlie Rose: Hamas and everybody else.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: It’s- Iran is a definite problem in the region. So, you got to, you got to work against that problem, but one of the ways you work against it is by talking with it and working with it openly.
