Reporting for Duty: Wesley Clark

[thedrifter]

09-22-2003

Hack's Target

Reporting for Duty: Wesley Clark

By David H. Hackworth



With Wesley Clark joining the Democratic presidential candidates, there are enough eager bodies pointed toward the White House to make up a rifle squad. This bunch of wannabes could make things increasingly hot for Dubya – as long as they don’t blow each other away with friendly fire.



Since Clark tossed his steel pot into the inferno, I've been constantly asked, “Hack, what do you think of the general?”



For the record, I never served with Clark. But after spending three hours interviewing the man for Maxim’s November issue, I’m impressed. He is insightful, he has his act together, he understands what makes national security tick – and he thinks on his feet somewhere around Mach 3. No big surprise, since he graduated first in his class from West Point, which puts him in the super-smart set with Robert E. Lee, Douglas MacArthur and Maxwell Taylor.



Clark was so brilliant, he was whisked off to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and didn’t get his boots into the Vietnam mud until well after his 1966 West Point class came close to achieving the academy record for the most Purple Hearts in any one war. When he finally got there, he took over a 1st Infantry Division rifle company and was badly wounded.



Lt. Gen. James Hollingsworth, one of our Army’s most distinguished war heroes, says: “Clark took a burst of AK fire, but didn’t stop fighting. He stayed on the field till his mission was accomplished and his boys were safe. He was awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart. And he earned ‘em.”



It took months for Clark to get back in shape. He had the perfect excuse, but he didn’t quit the Army to scale the corporate peaks as so many of our best and brightest did back then. Instead, he took a demoralized company of short-timers at Fort Knox who were suffering from a Vietnam hangover and made them the best on post – a major challenge in 1970 when our Army was teetering on the edge of anarchy. Then he stuck around to become one of the young Turks who forged the Green Machine into the magnificent sword that Norman Schwarzkopf swung so skillfully during Round One of the Gulf War.



I asked Clark why he didn’t turn in his bloody soldier suit for Armani and the big civvy dough that was definitely his for the asking.



His response: “I wanted to serve my country.”



He says he now wants to lead America out of the darkness, shorten what promises to be the longest and nastiest war in our history and restore our eroding prestige around the world.



For sure, he’ll be strong on defense. But with his high moral standards and because he knows where and how the game’s played, there will probably be zero tolerance for either Pentagon porking or two-bit shenanigans.



No doubt he’s made his share of enemies. He doesn’t suffer fools easily and wouldn’t have allowed the dilettantes who convinced Dubya to do Iraq to even cut the White House lawn. So he should prepare for a fair amount of dart-throwing from detractors he’s ripped into during the past three decades.



Hey, I am one of those: I took a swing at Clark during the Kosovo campaign when I thought he screwed up the operation, and I called him a “Perfumed Prince.” Only years later did I discover from his book and other research that I was wrong – the blame should have been worn by British timidity and William Cohen, U.S. SecDef at the time.



At the interview, Clark came along without the standard platoon of handlers and treated the little folks who poured the coffee and served the bacon and eggs with exactly the same respect and consideration he gave the biggies in the dining room like my colleague Larry King and Bob Tisch, the Regency Hotel’s owner. An appealing common touch.



But if he wins the election, don’t expect an Andrew Jackson field-soldier type. Clark’s an intellectual, and his military career is more like Ike’s – that of a staff guy and a brilliant high-level commander. Can he make tough decisions? Bet on it. Just like Ike did during his eight hard but prosperous years as president.



The address of David Hackworth's home page is Hackworth.com. Sign in for the free weekly Defending America column at his Web site. Send mail to P.O. Box 11179, Greenwich, CT 06831. His newest book is “Steel My Soldiers’ Hearts.”

© 2003 David H. Hackworth.

http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=Hacks%20Target%20Homepage.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=32&rnd=150.39708266557034


Sempers,

Roger
:marine:

[Devildogg4ever]

He has stated as far as the war, the invasion was "a major blunder" he never would have supported. He has said if elected, he would leave in place a tax cut for middle-income Americans. He does support gun-possesion rights, but not on assault weapons.

[Kegler300]

Ret. Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Hugh Shelton: I Won't Back Clark For Prez

The military man who was Gen. Wesley Clark's superior officer when he served as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO shocked a California college forum earlier this month when he questioned Clark's integrity and said he wouldn't back his presidential candidacy under any circumstances.

Addressing a gathering at Foothill College in Los Altos, California two weeks ago, retired Gen. Hugh Shelton, who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Clinton, was asked by the event's moderator Dick Henning, "What do you think of General Wesley Clark and would you support him as a presidential candidate?"

At the mention of Clark's name, Shelton's expression darkened, and he paused for a drink of water.

The gesture prompted Henning to add, "I noticed you took a drink on that one!"

According to the account carried in the Los Altos Town Crier, Clark's old boss replied, "That question makes me wish it were vodka."

Gen. Shelton then explained:

"I've known Wes for a long time. I will tell you the reason he came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character issues, things that are very near and dear to my heart. I'm not going to say whether I'm a Republican or a Democrat. I'll just say Wes won't get my vote."

Though Gen. Shelton declined to elaborate, he offered only praise for President Bush, saying that he has "earned kudos in spite of the criticism" for keeping up the pressure in the war on terrorism.

Link to article (http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2003/9/24/131225.shtml)

[yellowwing]

What's up with Hackworth's waffling on General Clark? In http://www.sftt.org/daa/9aug99.html he calls him a "Perfumed Prince" "... these kind of dweebs are why the U.S. Army is in trouble."

Hack just lost some major "cool points" in my opinion.

[arzach]

He said his approach was based on three basic pillars. First, his strategy would reach out more aggressively to allies. He said he would also work to improve relations with international...

[Sparrowhawk]

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/tmwha/2003/tmwha030922.gif

[Sparrowhawk]

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/tmdiw/2003/tmdiw030923.gif




http://images.ucomics.com/comics/tmwha/2003/tmwha030917.gif


and here's another version...


http://www.ucomics.com/brucehammond/2003/09/19/

[Lock-n-Load]

:marine: I read with interest all the above posts, they were very comprehensive on this suit [Clark]...I judge Clark, yes, judge Clark...by the staff he has surrounding his chances to become the Democratic Party's standard-bearer for President in 2004...all of his King's men and women staffers...owe...alleigiance to Bill and Hillary Clinton...how cute...I say Clark is their...food taster...a phony in a suit with a glib tongue...if he succeeds in his masquerade...you can bet...Queen Hillary will emerge at the 11th hour and supplant good old Wes as he takes a step down to be her vice-President minion...yes, he was relieved of his European Command for veracity and character flaws...as stated above...he truly is a Clinton[s] pawn and he wears that suit so perfectly....Wes, you gofer, you are a phoney bastard just like your sponsors [ Bubba and Bucky Beaver]....this is going to be fun and games...when the average working/Democratic voter is led by the nose to the "promised land"....the political careers of King Bill and Queen Hillary are laced with lies by two [2] congenital liars, their record bears that out...why not pick up another clown [good old Wes]...as his past is flawed at birth...the same as Bill and Hillary...GW Bush will be re-elected in 2004 as the white knight in shinging battle-armor...and so righty so....in summation, the posts by ..Kegler300 and Arzach are brilliantly expressed...Semper Fi, Marines :marine:

[Sparrowhawk]

For some reason, I think ur right!!!!


http://images.ucomics.com/comics/tmjoh/2003/tmjoh030924.gif

[Sparrowhawk]

Will Hillary Clinton run?
She says no; everyone else seems to be saying yes


http://a799.g.akamai.net/3/799/388/bac59d625e7ab4/www.msnbc.com/news/2022533.jpg
"I am absolutely ruling it out," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., has told reporters. But her denials have failed to silence speculation she's eyeing the presidency in 2004.


By Mark Leibovich
THE WASHINGTON POST


WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 — There is a school of political thought that sees the 2004 presidential race in its purest form of conventional wisdom: that Wesley Clark, the fresh-faced and thick-necked general who entered the race last week, is the new Democratic front-runner, stealing the fire from Howard Dean (the old front-runner), who stole the fire from John Kerry (the old old front-runner), who himself is suddenly burning brighter than George W. Bush (the Old Inevitable) in a recent poll. But that calculation ignores a truth held fervently by many Very Savvy (or Very Bored) prognosticators: This is all about Hillary Rodham Clinton.


IT’S ALWAYS ABOUT Hillary Rodham Clinton, the proverbial Rorschach test for the nation’s stark divisions and creaky evolutions. Everything else is just annoying subtext.

And rest assured, says this alternative wisdom: Hillary is running for president. In 2004.

Hillary in 2004. It is, once again, a hot notion, being stoked from the hopeful left, the baiting right and the (choose your adjective) media. It doesn’t matter that a spokesman for Sen. Clinton says the New York Democrat will not run for president in 2004.

Or that this echoes similar proclamations from the former first lady herself on at least 138 occasions since the beginning of 2001, according to a database search of U.S. newspapers and magazine stories.

Or that these include such unambiguous denials as “I am absolutely ruling it out” (to the Associated Press on Aug. 29), and “I am absolutely ruling it out” (to the New York Daily News, a day later).

Hillary hysteria doesn’t disappear. It merely subsides, like a cold sore.
There are periodic eruptions, as in recent days. Bill Clinton, the Very Savvy (or Very Bored) former president, gave a hedgy non-denial last week when asked if his wife would run.
Advertisement

“That’s really a decision for her to make,” he said. He also was overheard saying that Hillary and Wesley Clark are the only stars of the Democratic Party.

CLARK AS STALKING HORSE
Clark, who is from Arkansas, is a key protagonist in the latest wave of Clinton conspiracy theories. It is obvious, say some Hillary theorists, that Clark, who is being advised by several former Clinton aides, is in the race for no other reason than to slow down Howard Dean. And that will muddle the 10-candidate field, which will lead to the inevitable drafting of Hillary. Who will then reward Clark by making him her running mate.
William Safire advanced a Clark hypothesis in the New York Times on Monday. Rudy Giuliani bought in on Imus. Congressional Quarterly columnist Craig Crawford yakety-yakked the notion on MSNBC and CBS.

Which, in turn, excited Adam Parkhomenko, a student at Northern Virginia Community College, who is organizing one of the several Draft Hillary movements — and who, in turn, is being flooded with media calls.

“Bush is vulnerable,” says Parkhomenko, 17. If a Democrat wins in 2004, Parkhomenko says, Hillary won’t run against him in 2008. By 2012, she will be 65 years old. So 2004, he says, is Hillary’s time. It’s all crystal clear, Parkhomenko says.

As it is to Crawford, who laid out the Wesley Clark as stalking horse scenario in his CQ column last week. Not only will Clark’s candidacy slow down Dean, Crawford wrote, it also will marginalize the first-tier likes of John Kerry, Richard Gephardt and Joe Lieberman. It will win Hillary more time to wriggle out of her promise not to run.

“So, basically, the four-star general is a dupe for the Clintons,” says CNN’s Paul Begala, a former Bill Clinton aide, waxing sarcastic. “I think that’s my favorite theory.”
But Crawford is insistent. “If Bush looks beatable, I don’t think Hillary can resist running,” he said in an interview.

SEEING UFOS
In his column, Crawford compared the belief that Hillary will run in 2004 to a belief in the existence of UFOs. “But on Wednesday,” he wrote, “I am sure I saw a UFO flying over the head of Clark as he announced his quest for the presidency.” On MSNBC, Crawford put the odds of Clinton running at “better than 50 percent.”

Which, in turn, made Adam Parkhomenko even more excited.
“Bush is vulnerable,” says Parkhomenko, who will be selling Hillary for President 2004 bumper stickers, buttons and T-shirts at the Democratic presidential debate in New York tomorrow night. He is going door-to-door, gathering names for a petition that he hopes to present to the former first lady in an effort to persuade her to run. “I’ve read a lot and watched a lot,” says Parkhomenko, who is convinced that he will cast his first-ever presidential ballot for Hillary Rodham Clinton in November 2004. “It makes perfect sense to me.”

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[arzach]

Been saying it for a week now...clark is only 'declared' now to beat down the 9 dwarfs...billary will be the 'draftee' and clark will be Veep. Believe me, if Dubya didn't appear vulnerable clark would be bait-casting on some lake and billary would be waiting for '08.

Rick

[firstsgtmike]

When the mainstream press picks up on the video and text of Clark's speech

GENERAL CLARK PRAISED CONDI, POWELL, RUMSFELD AND BUSH: 'WE NEED THEM THERE'

billary will have to rethink her strategy.

I can picture Clark's explanation:

"I said that when I was a Republican, but now I am a Democrat.

I haven't quite figured out my position when I join Nader's Green Party.

However, if I become the candidate for the Greenpeace Party, I have photos showing the destruction of the forests in Iraq as a result of our two invasions there. The photos prove that the Iraqi forests have been totally obliterated.

[Lock-n-Load]

Hey 'Hawk.....Thx for firing into my field of fire...it isn't the first time Marine machine gunners bailed my @ss out...some prayed, all I wanted was more ammo and water...most of us in here fight the good fight...no one will ever beat us!! Semper Fi, Marine:marine:

[Kegler300]

After last night's presidential debate, someone said that because of Clark's responses to the questions, he put the general back in generality.

[Kegler300]

http://www.strangecosmos.com/images/picturejokes/11983.jpg http://www.strangecosmos.com/images/picturejokes/12023.gif

[Sparrowhawk]

It's when I shot that M-60 over a Marine's head that was laying prone in a muddy rice paddy that worried some of them.. LOL


It gets better on Clark....

<hr>

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

GOP General Clark
Two years ago, this Democrat sounded like a Republican.

Friday, September 26, 2003 12:01 a.m.

If you're an active Republican, there's a good chance you've attended a Lincoln Day dinner, a staple on GOP community calendars. So it is in Little Rock, Arkansas, where the Pulaski County Republican Party invited hometown hero Wesley Clark to address its members on May 11, 2001. Anyone wondering where the Democratic candidate for President stands on a range of issues is sure to find the speech illuminating.

Lincoln Day dinners are partisan political events, and it was entirely in keeping with the spirit of the evening for the keynote speaker to voice his admiration of Republican leaders. In Mr. Clark's words, Ronald Reagan was "truly a great American leader," who "helped our country win the Cold War." His successor, George Bush, demonstrated "courage" and "vision" in postwar Europe, exercising "tremendous leadership and statesmanship."

The general also sang the praises of the current GOP leadership in Washington: "I'm very glad we've got the great team in office, men like Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Paul O'Neill--people I know very well--our president, George W. Bush. We need them there, because we've got some tough challenges ahead in Europe."

The speech also provides a look at the general's thinking on the foreign-policy and national-security challenges facing the country. Mr. Clark offered "a small prediction" that by the time his book came out "it may be World War III." He expressed the view that "we're going to be active; we're going to be forward engaged. But if you look around the world, there's a lot of work to be done."

Mr. Clark was asked about those remarks at yesterday's Democratic debate, and he replied that the country had made "an incredible journey" since September 2001 and that Mr. Bush had "recklessly cut taxes" and "recklessly took us into Iraq." We'd say the retired general has made a rather astonishing journey himself, and the public will have to judge the sincerity of his conversion.


Copyright © 2003 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110004066

[Sparrowhawk]

ON THE RECORD

'Politics Has to Stop at the Water's Edge'
What the Democratic candidate said at a Republican fund-raiser.

BY WESLEY CLARK
Friday, September 26, 2003 12:01 a.m.

(Editor's note: This is from a speech Gen. Clark delivered at the Lincoln Day dinner, a fund-raiser for the Pulaski County Republican Party, in Little Rock, Ark., May 11, 2001.)


I found a group of people in the Army I loved. I was in a company at Fort Hood. Everybody in the company had been wounded. We were supposed to have 172 people; we actually had only about 70, 60 people assigned. And everybody had been wounded. The armorer who looked after weapons couldn't walk; he was on crutches. Other people couldn't use their hands. I had a hand and a leg wound. I couldn't run or do PT or shoot a pistol or anything. But somehow, we all hung together; we worked 90 days straight that summer.

Gen. Bill Paige is here, and he remembers those days in the Army when you worked five days a week, and on Saturday they'd give you inspections to see if you kept up your equipment the right way, and then you'd work Sunday to make up for the work you should have done on Saturday. And then by Monday morning, you were working again. It was a draft Army in those days. Not one of those soldiers had volunteered to be there, but they'd all served their country, they'd given their blood, and they were proud to have served their country. We won the battalion re-enlistment award that summer, because we had re-enlisted one soldier to stay in the United States Army. It was a tough time, but I love those men, and that's why I stayed with it. And over the years we built the United States Army and our nation's military back up in strength.

We were really helped when President Ronald Reagan came in. I remember noncommissioned officers who were going to retire and they re-enlisted because they believed in President Reagan. I remember when he gave his speech on the 40th anniversary of Normandy. I don't know how many of you all--do we have any World War II veterans in this room? Anybody who is here? I think we ought to give our World War II veterans a hand.

I was a colonel at the Pentagon. I was working for the Army chief of staff and doing lessons learned and things. And I didn't get to go to the celebration of Normandy, but we heard the speech when he gave it. He talked about how the rangers took Pointe de Hoc. He talked about how they did it for love. And we all cried. That's the kind of president Ronald Reagan was. He helped our country win the Cold War. He put it behind us in a way no one ever believed would be possible. He was truly a great American leader. And those of us in the Armed Forces loved him, respected him and tremendously admired him for his great leadership.





I served out at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., as the commanding general out there during Operation Desert Storm. And I got to train many troops and leaders before they went over, but a funny thing happened about that time. The Soviet Union kind of collapsed. The Warsaw Pact disappeared. The East Germans gave up; they became part of Germany. The German army that was part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization moved into East Germany. I remember they sent a German brigadier general around the United States--to each of the army posts a German brigadier came in, and he said, "Fellas," he said, "it's over, we won. The Cold War is over."
We couldn't quite believe it. I mean Desert Storm was wonderful; we whipped Saddam Hussein and all that sort of thing. But the Cold War was over, the Berlin Wall was down. And President George Bush had the courage and the vision to push our European allies to take the risk to tell the Russians to leave, and to set up the conditions so all of Germany and later many nations of Eastern Europe could become part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, part of the West with us. And we will always be grateful to President George Bush for that tremendous leadership and statesmanship.





Then a funny thing happened. It was very strange; I was at this point down in Fort Hood, Texas, with Gen. Bill Paige. I was commander general, First Cavalry Division. Gen. Paige was the deputy corps commander. I had orders to go to Washington in April of 1994. I showed up there to work for Gen. Shalikashvili as the director for strategy as the director of strategy for the United States Armed Forces on the Joint Staff.
And I discovered that when we lost our enemy we had lost our strategy. We lost our direction in the world. We just--it just didn't add up. The week I got there, let me tell you what was on my plate. I showed up, I was a division commander--you know, I was having a good time at Fort Hood. I learned to play golf down there. I rode a horse two days a week. We had 53 horses in the First Cavalry Division. We trained and went to the National Training Center. We were prepared to go to war anywhere in the world. We deployed on no notice back to Kuwait three times [to] make sure Saddam Hussein played straight.

But I was not prepared for what I found when I got to Washington and worked there. They gave me three thick briefing books to study. The week I showed up there, the two presidents of Rwanda and Burundi were flying on an airplane together in Africa. The airplane crashed and a war started in Africa. And it degenerated into some of the most horrible ethnic cleansing in the 20th century. Some 800,000 Africans over a period of weeks were hunted down and hacked to death with machetes because they belonged to the wrong tribe. They were carrying identification cards the Belgians had taught them to carry. It was a horrible massacre.

Then at the same time I discovered that the North Koreans probably had reprocessed uranium from a nuclear reactor. They probably had two nuclear weapons. But they weren't going to let the international agency check that reprocessed uranium to confirm it. And if they didn't, we were going to put sanctions on them, economic sanctions, and they were going to say that was the equivalent of starting a war. And they were going to go to war with us.

And then at the same time we had these thugs in Haiti. To get after the thugs for holding a coup down there and running the Haitian government out, we put an economic embargo in place against Haiti. What that was doing was destroying the lives of ordinary Haitians. They were risking their lives, and they were drowning and getting boats--everything that would float--trying to get to Florida. It was a mess.

And the weekend I got there our aircraft were dropping bombs in Bosnia as part of a NATO mission to attack the Serbs that were shelling Gorazde. I've never seen anything like it.





Meanwhile, I was told I had to do a nuclear posture review and look at how many weapons. Gen. Shalikashvili called me when I'd been there about a week and a half. He called me and said, "Look, Wes," he said. "I hired you to be the strategist." He said, "So, tell me, what is our strategy?" Well, I didn't have the faintest idea. He didn't either, and neither did anybody else.
The simple fact was there were two views. One view was that since the Cold War was over and the Soviet Union didn't exist anymore and we said Russia wasn't going to be an enemy that we ought to bring our troops home and keep them in places like Fort Hood, Fort Polk and Fort Riley and Fort Carson and send them out to the National Training Center and train. And if there was another war, well, we want to be ready to fight and win.

There was another group who said, "No, since there's no Soviet Union and no real threat to America you can use these troops to do other things." And there was fusing and fighting in Washington, and people were beating on each other. And there were congressional hearings--I'm sorry, Senator [Tim Hutchinson], about the congressional hearings--but you know those of us in the military, we shudder and quake when somebody says there is a congressional hearing. Because we're going to get called up there. Somebody is going to ask us something and we're either not going to know the answer or we're going to make the mistake of giving them the answer. And either way, you're in trouble. And so these were tough times and I spent the next six years trying to deal with the problems.


(Cont)

[Sparrowhawk]

Now I just want to ask you: Do you ever ask why it is that these people in these other countries can't solve their own problems without the United States sending their troops over there? And do you ever ask why it is the Europeans, the people that make the Mercedes and the BMWs, that got so much money, can't put some of that money in their own defense programs and they need us to do their defense for them?
When I went to Washington some of the old retired generals gave me two pieces of advice. They said No. 1, don't ever get into a war with the North Koreans. So, that guy in North Korea, Kim Il Sung, is crazy, and he will enjoy a war, and you won't. They said, they other thing is stay out of Bosnia. It's a quagmire, it's like Vietnam. So, I went to Washington with that guidance, and as I said, I spent the next six years trying to work this.

When I got there, I discovered no one knew anything about Bosnia, so I went over there. And I met with both sides and learned about it. Next thing that came along was we tried to strengthen the United Nations so we could stop the fighting. It didn't work. So, the next thing that happened was they said, you're going to have to help your NATO allies get out; [it's] going to take 20,000 troops to get them out. And it will take three months, and you're going to have a lot of people killed. And after you leave, there's going to be a slaughter in Bosnia. That didn't make any sense either. So it was decided that we'd go over and try to get peace agreements set up. We'd use the 20,000 troops, we'd stay there for a year and we'd get the peace, we'd impose it, and then we'd leave and it would be all right. And that didn't work either. And we're still there.

We discovered that the Bosnia commitment led to a commitment elsewhere in Europe. When I got over and I met those people, I remember a guy told me--one of the Bosnians--he said, "Look at this city," he says. "Do you understand that there are people over there who kill--they kill indiscriminately, that snipers are shooting at our children?" He said, "I've seen a five-year-old boy get tortured and killed." He said, "Now I can understand why they tortured and killed a grown man, but I can't understand why they tortured and killed a five-year-old child." But you see, it just shows how innocent I was, because I couldn't understand why they tortured and killed anybody.





As I began to look at that situation, and I listened to it, and I thought about our own country, and I thought about what we believed as Americans, I realized that our fate was tied up with theirs. World War I started in the Balkans. World War II started because European nations couldn't hold to the peace that was agreed after World War I. That even thought the Balkans are a long way from the center of Europe, with the modern economy as it is today, the Balkans were a part of Europe. And that it was an explosive and a dangerous situation. And so I did my best, along with several other people, to try and bring peace there.
I took a detour to South America for a year and learned about some of the things that Asa Hutchinson's going to have to learn the hard way about the drug problem. And then I was tapped to go back--as one senator explained it to me, she said: "You don't want to go over there and fight Bill Clinton's war in the Balkans, do you?" And I said, "Well, Senator, the honest truth is that when you're a soldier, you march to the sound of the guns. That's your duty, and that's--they tell me to do it, that's what I'm going to do."

And so we went over there, we got a little tough with the people in Bosnia; we arrested a few war criminals; we put the squeeze on; we broke the back of the hard-line ethnic cleansers. And things were going pretty well, and old Slobodan Milosevic decided he'd stir up trouble somewhere else and moved into Kosovo. And I was really concerned about this, and I tried to spread the alarm and warn people about it. But despite that, we ended up having to go to war. It was about two years ago.

After nine months of diplomatic wrangling that failed to stop another round of ethnic cleansing, the United States and NATO did go to war in the Balkans. It was a 78-day air campaign. It was high-stakes; if we lost, we would have destroyed NATO. European governments would have fallen. Confidence in American security and our American military world-wide would have been shattered.

But we didn't lose. We hung fast; we broadened the strikes; we intensified the strikes, and we deployed 5,500 American troops over there with the Apache helicopters into Albania. We had a ground plan that was taking form, and I would have laid my stars on the table if necessary to get that plan implemented. We weren't going to lose. One thing I learned after my experience in Vietnam is we never, ever, ever commit the United States of America to any fight, to any mission unless you go into it with a clear intent to win.

Anyway, a lot of that is in my book. The title of the book is "Waging Modern War"; I'm not going to go through all of that tonight. But I'll just make a small prediction: When this book comes out, it may be World War III. Because when you're there, when you're a general and you're caught up in these things, it's just like politics or business or anything else--you know a lot of people with different ideas. And I hope that we have learned something out of this experience in the Balkans.





I'll tell you what I've learned out there. What I've learned from Europe is that there are a lot of people out in the world who really, really love and admire the United States. Don't you ever believe it when you hear foreign leaders making nasty comments about us. That's them playing to their domestic politics as they misread it. Because when you talk to the people out there, they love us. They love our values. They love what we stand for in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They love American civic involvement. They love to see a grass-roots political structure like this tonight. This is democracy. This is the rule of law. This is what they love and they admire. They want it. And that's why our work abroad is so vitally important.
See, what I discovered is, we are the real--what the French call the hyperpower in the world today. It's not that we're the only military superpower. That's true. We're unchallengeable militarily today. We've got a great group of men and women in the armed forces. Well, I do want to say that they're underfunded. I'm going to get to that in a minute. And I also want to say that when they vote, we better count their ballots.

But you see, it's not just the military. It's our economy. We're driving the world. It's our language, it's our culture, it's our music, it's our faith. I've met evangelical Christians--missionaries all over the world and seen the tremendous fruit of their efforts. That's what America stands for. We're truly a great world-leading country.

But we're also extremely vulnerable. Our economy--we're using three times--we've got three times as much foreign investment as we're investing--capital flow--as we're putting out there. They're investing here because they believe in us. We're using energy like it's going out of style. We're using five to eight times as much energy per capita as people in the rest of the world, twice as much as even the Europeans. We're vulnerable to security threats--everything from terrorism to the developing missiles that are--we know rogue states are developing to aim at us.

And so I think we have to have a new strategy, and we have to have a consensus on the strategy, and we have to have a bipartisan consensus, and politics has to stop in America at the water's edge. We've got to reach out, and we've got to find those people in the world and share our values and beliefs--and we've got to reinforce them. We've got to bring them here and let them experience the kind of life that we have. They've got to get an education here. They've got to be able to send their children here. They they've got to go home. And they've got to carry the burdens in their own lands, and to some extent we have to help them.

One of the things I'm most proud of is they asked me to serve on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy. I don't know if you all know what the National Endowment for Democracy is, but President Ronald Reagan started it in the early 1980s to promote American values abroad. And one of the things that we do with a very small amount of money--which I hope Sen. Hutchinson will keep in mind and help us a little bit with, and maybe his brother will too. This is a $30 million program that could be a $70 million program. We help democracy, we help elections, we help form political parties. There's a National Democratic Institute, an International Republican Institute. And we've got great young men and women out serving our way of life in these other countries. And they're doing a great job of it. And thank God Ronald Reagan had the vision to start that. But I'm really proud to be on that. We've got to do that.

You see, in the Cold War we were defensive. We were trying to protect our country from communism. Well guess what, it's over. Communism lost. Now we've got to go out there and finish the job and help people live the way they want to live. We've got to let them be all they can be. They want what we have. We've got some challenges ahead in that kind of strategy. We're going to be active, we're going to be forward engaged. But if you look around the world, there's a lot of work to be done. And I'm very glad we've got the great team in office: men like Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condolzeezza Rice, Paul O'Neill--people I know very well--our president, George W. Bush. We need them there, because we've got some tough challenges ahead in Europe.



(cont)

[Sparrowhawk]

We've got a NATO that's drifting right now. I don't know what's happened to it. But the situation in the Balkans where we've still got thousands of American troops, it's in trouble. It's going downhill on us as we're watching it. Our allies haven't quite picked up the load on that. But our allies say they're going to build a European security and defense program with a rival army to NATO. Well, I think it's a political imperative that they do more for defense, but I think we have to understand that that linkage between the United Sates and Europe, that bond on security, that's in our interest.
Look, in politics they told me--I don't know anything about politics now, I want to make that clear. But they told me--I read, do my reading in Time magazine and so forth. And they said in politics you've always got to protect your base. Well, for the United States, our base is Europe. We've got to be there, and we've got to be engaged in Europe. And that means we've got to take care of NATO, we've got to make sure the Europeans stay in it, and we've got to stay with the problem in the Balkans, even though we don't like it. We will get it resolved, and we'll help bring democracy and Westernization to those countries there.

We've got a Russia that's anxious to extend its former security zone. I was talking to the Poles last year before I left Poland. And they said they've been to the inauguration of the Ukrainian president, Kuchma. And they listened to what Putin said at his toast. Putin picked up his glass of vodka, and he looked at the Ukrainians, he looked at Kuchma, and he said in Russian, "Russia and Ukraine, we are more than brothers. We are in each other's souls." Well, this absolutely chilled the Ukrainians and the Poles, because it was a clear announcement that Russia is going after Ukraine. Russia can't be a great power, militarily or economically, until it regains control of Ukraine. Last summer they had some Russians pose as Poles trying to buy up the electricity system. They didn't succeed posing as Poles; they bought it fair and square about six months ago. As soon as Putin became the president, he put some Ukrainian cities on a 12-hour diet of electricity, so they had blackouts 12 hours a day during last winter. The squeeze is on in Ukraine. And we know that the squeeze is also on other nations around the periphery of the former Soviet Union so Russia can regain its security perimeter.

China, clearly expanding power. It's growing economically. We've got to maintain some kind of an economic relationship with China. We don't want China to become an adversary. But we're going to have to police the rules of the road. We're certainly going to have to continue our reconnaissance flights. There is no excuse for their having detained our airplane, and we want that aircraft back. We're going to have to manage the competition so we can keep it peaceful, we can bring them along and get them engaged in world institutions and open up communications in China. Nothing rang more hollow than the Chinese leaders' protests that they couldn't deal effectively with us on the airplane because of the will of the Chinese people, when they were controlling public opinion and shaping that will. Now that's something that the Internet and modern technology and democratic standards will fix over time.





In the Middle East we've got an active guerrilla war between Israel and Palestine. It's a shame; it's a tragedy. I was with former prime minister Ehud Barak last weekend in San Antonio, and we talked about this. He made a bold strategic move. He restored legitimacy to Israel by pulling out of Lebanon. He called Arafat; he called his bluff. He said here it is, you can have everything you want; you can have part of Jerusalem; you can have the temple area and everything--you can have control of this. You can have the settlements here frozen until--but it wasn't enough. Arafat couldn't deal. So now we've got a low-level guerrilla war to deal with. It's going to go from hot to cold; there'll be talks of peace and so forth. But the sad truth about this is that that probably a lot more young men and women will die. I wish we could bring peace to that troubled region. It's going to be a major challenge over the years ahead.
In South Asia, India and Pakistan--nobody's watching--they're both nuclear powers. We can't seem to get engaged in there and get a grip on this because we don't have the economic interest there yet; we don't have the geopolitical interest. But these are two nuclear-armed countries. When I was out in the National Training Center in 1990 I was hosting a group of Pakistanis--it was May of 1990. And we had dinner at the officers club. We had the briefing on the battle that was going to take place the next day. We were getting ready to go to bed about 8:00 at night because it was a 2:00 in the morning wake-up. And the Pakistanis said we must call home; we just received a message; there's an emergency brewing. They had a war about to break out with India. They were about to load nuclear weapons on their aircraft. It was that close to catastrophe. And I don't think it ever merited a headline in a United States newspaper. That situation's still going on today. They're both openly nuclear now. They're still fighting on the glacier of 21,000 feet, where if the bullets don't get you, the cold will. And they're still fighting a guerrilla battle in the disputed province of Kashmir.

The brilliant work during the 1980s in Africa--well, it's started to fade. Nelson Mandela was a great leader; he broke the back of apartheid. But now, we need help. We've got to get those AIDS drugs in there. We've got to provide opportunities for trade and investment. We've got to help and corruption. We've go to have a regional organization in the [inaudible] that can take care of the disputes and settle the boundary issues. We've got to break the back of greed and corruption, and [inaudible] illicit wealth from the diamond mines and the [inaudible] feeding and killing and the mayhem in Africa. And I think we've got to help Africans to help each other to do this.





And then on our own borders there's a problem with Colombia. I was down in Colombia many times during the year I lived in Panama. I met with the Colombian armed forces. I met with the Peruvian armed forces. A lot of corrupt people down there. I remember my wife made the mistake of telling Gen. Ramoso Rios's wife that it was her birthday. And as we were leaving, Gen. Ramoso Rios's wife gave my wife a beautiful gold bracelet. Totally uncalled for. We had it appraised, of course. Turned out I had to buy it from the United States government in order to keep it. But I knew in my heart the guy was as corrupt as they come. He's one of the men who's now in jail for having dealt--taking the [inaudible] from illicit arms sales and so forth.
We've got real difficulties dealing with the problems south of the border. These are some wonderful, wonderful people. They've never had a chance to live under the kind of equal-opportunity government that we pride ourselves here in America. Somehow we've got to help them in those countries build their own governments. We've got to help the country of Colombia. There's 40 million people who live in Colombia. They're all coming here if we don't help them stop that war down there. I don't think there's a military solution to it. I went down there and looked at it. I did the [inaudible] patrols; I flew in the helicopters; I met the military commanders. It's going to take a combination of economic and political measures and just a little help from the military to make that work.

But it's going to take American leadership. And I'm delighted to see Gen. Colin Powell is working that problem actively. We've had the Colombian president up here, and I was so pleased that President Bush called for a North American Free Trade Agreement, because I think the ultimate answer in South America is to bring prosperity, bring American know-how down there, and let's build one great team in the Americas. I think if we do that, if we tend these security challenges there, it's all going to rebound to our benefit. We're going to find countries in the world responding to us, supporting and reinforcing our own values and interests. We're going to find tremendous prosperity and crossover. We're going to find it in the state of Arkansas and even the city of Little Rock. Maybe even northwest Arkansas will benefit from all this. We've seen it already in Nafta. We're going to see it tenfold in the years ahead.

(Cont.)

[Sparrowhawk]

What I found in people abroad is, they want to be like us. They want for us to respect them the way they respect us. Sometimes they want American assistance, especially if we tell them what to do, which we do on occasion. And on rare occasions, they may want American leadership. When they want that, they're probably going to want troops and police forces to go with it. We might have to do some of that in the years ahead. People have great visions and great dreams about America. And in our own self-interest, we have to live up to these expectations.
Now when I was in eighth grade at [inaudible] Heights Elementary School, Ms. Shannon, our eight-grade teacher, made us memorize Carl Sandburg's poem "Chicago." Many of you probably did too. And I thought it was about the city. But as I was unpacking up some of my many 4,000 pounds of books and everything else, I found this poem. And as I was avoiding housework, I was rereading the poem. And it occurred to me that it's not about Chicago at all; it's about our country. Let me just read a couple of lines for you:


Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler,
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders . . .
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. . . .

Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle . . .

You see, that was the vision of America in the early 20th century. And we live that vision. We fought and won two world wars. We kept freedom alive in the face of communism during the Cold War. And we kept he peace. We did fight and get bloodied in Korea and Vietnam, but we made it the American century.
Today we are in a new era. It's probably not going to be an era of machine tools, railroads and freight handling, and husky broad shoulders. It's going to be an era based on knowledge, with a knowledge-based economy--chips and data bits, clicks as well as bricks. It'll take nimble minds as well as strong shoulders. But we've got all of that. We've got it more than anybody else in the whole world. We've got it in our country; we've got it here in the state of Arkansas. And I think if we stay engaged and lead, that we'll make the 20th century the American century; the 21st century will be the American century, and the 21st century will be humanity's century as well.

Gen. Clark, who commanded NATO forces in Europe from 1997 through 2000, is a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.


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[firstsgtmike]

He said that when he was a Republican, but now he's a Democrat.