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If you don't take the time to listen you will never understand a person who is willing to answer a question fully and honestly. Clark was asked what could be accomplished with the "troop surge" option. And he gave an honest answer. He explained what could be accomplished with a surge of 30,000 troops. A little. Temporarily. He described a technical feasibility as in "that's mechanically possible". The full context is this:
"Diane Rehm: But it sounds, General Clark, as though Robert Kagan is talking about a huge surge of military. Where does that huge surge of military personnel come from?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, that's, that's-
Robert Kagan: Can I just jump in before we talk about-
Diane Rehm: Sure.
Robert Kagan: -those numbers that I'm talking about-
Diane Rehm: Sure.
Robert Kagan: -because we're talking about numbers in the range of 20 to 30 and possibly 40 thousand, and just, just, I know General Clark knows this stuff very well, better than I do, but in the short term at least those, those numbers can be achieved by stretching out rotations, which is very, which is a real hardship for the soldiers-
Diane Rehm: Sure is.
Robert Kagan: -which is one reason why we have to move very quickly to expand the overall size of the Army and Marines.
Diane Rehm: And before you respond, General Clark, let me just remind our listeners at :27 before the hour, you're listening to the Diane Rehm Show. Go right ahead.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, you know, I think it's possibly on a short-term basis to surge 20 or 30 thousand. It's a question of the level of pain you're willing to inflict on the rest of force, the people who are back here preparing, the people who are in the Guard and Reserve. That can be done. That, that's mechanically possible. The question is: What do you gain from it? As Robert said, we don't have any leverage against Iran. So, we're going to put these troops in there to try to stabilize the situation. Are we likely to succeed by increasing 20 or 30 thousand troops. Temporarily, I think you'll probably suppress some of the violence. They'll have more difficulty moving and so forth, but within six weeks, eight weeks, six months, if Iran wants to crank up the heat on the United States forces, they'll find a way to do this. So, how are we going to come back and deal with Iran? That's the question.
Clark also said this on the same show:
"Diane Rehm: Do you agree with that, General Clark, breaking up the Maliki government?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Yes, there's, there, there's been talk about that, but, Diane, we, we've got to talk about the bigger regional picture. We've got to talk about Iran and Syria and the neighbors, and what the President is doing by focusing on the troops strength is he's putting his head down and not seeing the big picture here. There are reasons for that. This is a very painful set of discussions, and what we're doing is we're moving more and more sharply into opposition to Iran. Iran is the neighbor. Iran has 70, 75 million people. They're strong, and they've got a grip on our interests in places like Lebanon and on the borders with Israel. So, this is going to come out in many other ways. You cannot answer a strategic political problem simply by a temporary increase of troops on the ground in Iraq."
Clark nails why the temporary gains would ultimately be futile: "but within six weeks, eight weeks, six months (Iran could crank up trouble again)" if Iraq is dealt with as a military problem. Clark also recently had this exchange on the Ed Schultz show:
Ed Schultz: And with that, our resources continue to be deployed for- depleted. For instance, in visiting with Senator Reid last night, or last week, he, he was saying that, where are we going to get the troops. I mean, John McCain is out there saying we should put in more troops, and that is, of course, is one of the options - injecting more troops into Iraq. It, it's Reid's feeling is that we don't have those troops. What do you know? What do you think?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I think you could come up with 20,000 troops for six months, but at the end of that, you're really in trouble. At that point, you cannot sustain the additional troops, and so you're going to have a big cutback. And I think what has to realized about this is, it's not a mechanical problem. There's a strong opposing force against the U.S. presence there. There are active measures taken against us. So, it's not a matter of, of, of like stacking blocks up and how many blocks per hour can you stack, because there's someone coming around and knocking those blocks down as soon as you stack them up. And until we can deal with the political problem of that - which is a political problem, not only inside Iraq, but Iran and Syria - we're not going to succeed."
I think your summary of Clark's position completely missed the mark, I hope that wasn't intentional.
Clark is a military analyst. Almost every possible move has up and down sides. Sometimes the advantages outweigh the disadvantages and vice versa, but Clark will always lay out the facts as he sees them. He has an opinion both about what an additional 20,000 U.S. troops inside Iraq's capital could do, and couldn't do. He can recognize short term marginal military advantages, within very specific parameters, to deploying more security forces inside the capital. But he also said it would put a harsh burden on our military families, and at the end of the day nothing of lasting value would be accomplished. The troops could not be sustained at that level, the insurgents would adjust, the Americans would have to leave, and Iraq would be in no more stable a state than it is now, without a political solution.
One thing I like about Clark actually is that he does lay information right there on the table for others to ponder along with him. He strongly believes that in a Democracy citizens have both a need and a right to be fully informed. We obviously are reaching some different conclusions about the meaning of Clark's comments.
I was there in person with Clark in New Hampshire about 6 weeks ago when Clark said that McCain was "blowing smoke" with his proposal to send more troops into Iraq, it wouldn't solve anything. "Blowing smoke" is a direct quote by the way, lol.
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