Iraq: The Way Forward—A Conversation with General Wesley Clark

[Boo Boo]

This is a transcript of an interview with Clark before an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington D.C. It includes a question and answer session after the first 1/2 hour.

Here's an excerpt:

ACKERMAN: How does our C-minus solution work its way through the Quadrennial Defense Review and our force structure for the next five years?

CLARK: Well, I think -- as I -- of course, I didn't have any participation in writing the QDR and I don't know all the discussions that have gone behind. I'm only reading what has been released of the QDR.

But I've never subscribed to the long war theory, this sort of 40-year war. If the best the United States can do as a national strategy is go against terrorists in the Islamic world, and the way we do it is by invading countries, that's a long war that'll never end and that we'll never succeed in. It's not the right strategic framework for thinking about the United States in the world. It's the wrong strategic framework.

Yes, we have to protect ourselves against terrorism. We know how to do that. It is fundamentally a matter of ideas first and last. It's persuading people that we can get along and we don't have to solve these problems by force. It is secondarily a matter of law enforcement, information sharing and intelligence activities, cooperation between nations to head off the proponents of violence. And third and last, as a last resort only, it may involve military operations.

But one thing I learned in my experience is that if you want to fight, you can usually get a fight. If you're looking for a fight with people you can get one, whether it's in a bar in Manhattan or, you know, Friday night after a high school football game in Little Rock. All you have to do is go up to people and shove them, insult them and punch them, and most people have about the same amount of courage, about the same amount of tolerance, and most people can swing a fist about the same way. And when it's all said and done, you haven't proved too much and you probably haven't changed the situation.

So if we want to move toward a larger war against a group of people who have different religious convictions, that's certainly possible to stimulate and create such a war. I think it would be a tragic mistake. I think the right framework for us, and the framework that goes beyond the QDR, is the framework of how do you help this country move forward in a global economy.

Get the rest here: http://www.cfr.org/publication/9845/

[SharonAnn]

1. Thanks, great transcript. Glad to have seen it.

[Vidar]

2. Thank you for posting and thank you, General Clark.

[Boo Boo]

3. Shamelessly kicking this fine piece of transcription. Well... actually, it

is riddled with minor errors, but it's a great read. There was so much good stuff I had trouble deciding what to excerpt. This interview was much more along the lines of what I was expecting from the speech he gave to Clemons' group, which really ended up being more like a stump speech. This one is quite wonkish with some excellent (even contentious) questions from the audience at the end.

I command thee: go read it.

:dem: