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I received an email today from www.CommonDreams.org ... they sent the following link to an article about Clark's "anti-war" position on Iraq ... however, at the end of the extracts from this article, i've included extracts from Clark's interview with Salon that was conducted 4 days after the Iraq invasion began ... that interview paints a very different picture of Clark's views ... the insights he showed in that interview about his predictions for post-war Iraq were dead on the money ... For those who want to get past the "pro-war" and "anti-war" labels, what do you think of Clark's position on Iraq ??Common Dreams source: http://www.commondreams.org/news2003/0916-10.htm
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Clark explained on CNN (1/21/03) that if he had been in charge, "I probably wouldn't have made the moves that got us to this point. But just assuming that we're here at this point, then I think that the president is going to have to move ahead, despite the fact that the allies have reservations." As he later elaborated (CNN, 2/5/03): "The credibility of the United States is on the line, and Saddam Hussein has these weapons and so, you know, we're going to go ahead and do this and the rest of the world's got to get with us...
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After the fall of Baghdad, any remaining qualms Clark had about the wisdom of the war seemed to evaporate. "Liberation is at hand. Liberation-- the powerful balm that justifies painful sacrifice, erases lingering doubt and reinforces bold actions," Clark wrote in a London Times column (4/10/03). "Already the scent of victory is in the air."
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Clark made bold predictions about the effect the war would have on the region: "Many Gulf states will hustle to praise their liberation from a sense of insecurity they were previously loath even to express. Egypt and Saudi Arabia will move slightly but perceptibly towards Western standards of human rights." George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair "should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt," Clark explained.
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Salon interview source: http://www.vote-smart.org/speech_detail.php?speech_id=M000003812
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Salon: What, if anything, would you have done differently in the current crisis?
Clark: Well, I would have said that at the outset we should have built a stronger legal framework on the whole war on terror and then worked to bring NATO into it so we had the NATO nations engaged more actively for the war on terror. And that in turn would have led naturally into the work against Iraq.
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Salon: So you think the case has been made well then?
Clark: I believe it could have been made. Although the element of urgency was always missing.
Salon: You've referred to the campaign against Iraq as "elective surgery"; I imagine that means that you support disarming Saddam in principle, just not with the same urgency the Bush administration feels.
Clark: My view on it was and has been that at some point you're going to need to take actions to deal with the problem of Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. But those actions didn't have to necessarily be military and they didn't have to be now. It's the administration that chose to do this set of actions at this time. And the reason they've had problems persuading people of the necessity for doing it has been because they couldn't address the urgency.
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Clark: I think the importance of working with allies is going to become self-evident in the aftermath of this operation. We're not going to be able to maintain stability in the Middle East, support the reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq, deal with the challenges of North Korea, continue this struggle against terrorism, and face the problem of Iran alone and still return to prosperity in this country. It's bigger than what we can do.
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Salon: So you don't share the president's optimism that this is going to be the first Middle Eastern country in a sort of democracy domino effect?
Clark: I think that's possible, but I wouldn't say that's the most likely outcome. The most likely outcome is a stuttering instability in the region, intensified repression by some states, marginal moderation in others, and for the region more uncertainty ... that's the most likely outcome.
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Salon: Of the people who are running this war, from Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld and Powell on down, in terms of the political appointees, are there are any who you particularly like who you would work with again, hypothetically, in some ...
Clark: I like all the people who are there. I've worked with them before. I was a White House Fellow in the Ford administration when Secretary Rumsfeld was White House chief of staff and later Secretary of Defense, and Dick Cheney was the deputy chief of staff at the White House and later the chief.
Paul Wolfowitz I've known for many, many years. Steve Hadley at the White House is an old friend. Doug Feith I worked with very intensively during the time we negotiated the Dayton Peace Agreement; he was representing the Bosnian Muslims then, along with Richard Perle. So I like these people a lot. They're not strangers. They're old colleagues.
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When I go back and think about the atmosphere in which the PATRIOT Act was passed, it begs for a reconsideration and review. And it should be done. Law enforcement agencies will always chafe at any restriction whatsoever when they're in the business of trying to get their job done. But in practice we've always balanced the need for law enforcement with our own protection of our constitutional rights and that's a balance that will need to be reviewed.
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Clark: Well, as I told you, I don't think the president built the case and developed the coalition. I've always been concerned -- and you know from my writing -- that there wasn't evidence to justify the urgency to justify moving against Saddam Hussein right now. Rather than presenting the international community with a problem and asking its assistance in helping to resolve it, the United States government effectively presented the solution and asked for countries to agree with its views. And too many didn't.
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