Your Daily Dose of Clark
General Clark appeared on 60 Minutes II tonight in a great interview with Dan Rather. The transcript and a short video clip are online. Clark got very emotional during this discussion of the Balkan genoicde:
DAN RATHER: You brought a book along with you this morning and before we get too much further along, I'd like you to tell me why you brought it along and what impresses you in it.GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well I brought this book along. I was given this book a few days ago up in Dartmouth. And when I opened it and just flipped through it, I -- by the photographer who was there-- he-- I immediately realized why I had so strongly warned the Pentagon about the dangers and the need to focus on Slobodan Milosevic and what was going on in the Balkans.
And I brought it along because it's-- when you talk about policy disputes, sometimes it can seem academic. It's like words. They don't mean much. And I brought it along because I want to show you what a policy dispute's all about. This is Behelena (PH) in Bosnia, Herzegovina, in 1992. This is what ethnic cleansing is, or was, in the Balkans.
These are Serbs. These are dead Muslims. This is the casualness, the pornography of violence against civilians. And this is not real war. This is war against unarmed people. (UNINTEL PHRASE) these dead, he's kicking them. He's relaxing at the end of (UNINTEL), he's got a cigarette lit, he's got his sunglasses up. He just wants to make sure he's finished his work. And I just couldn't bear the thought that the United States would stand by and allow this to happen.
DAN RATHER: What is the other picture you have marked?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: In the summer of 1998, while I was in command, another round of ethnic cleansing started. And I was warning the Pentagon about it and trying to mobilize U.S. opinion and U.S. leadership to take action to prevent it.
Well, we did take some action. We tried to undertake diplomacy. There was a lot of discussion. And meanwhile the Serbs were moving some 300 to 400,000 Kosovar Albanians -- were driven from their homes. They fled to the mountains because they had to get away from the Serb military.
And in the mountains, this is what you saw. This is a five-week-old baby who's died of exposure. And the family's preparing him for burial. When you can stop something like this, you should.DAN RATHER: ...Hearing you speak of this is the first time I've seen you speak with real emotion.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Yeah.
DAN RATHER: Deep-seated emotion. Tell me why that is?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Why? Because you're dealing with people's lives when you're dealing with things like this, Dan. This is about life and death. It's about the difference between academic theories and discussions of deterrence and prevention and preemption, and what the real impact is on the ground of U.S. actions.
And I don't think you can be a real statesman or a real leader and be-- can connect the two. Lots of people go to school and they study it. Lots of people on the ground. But there aren't enough linkages. It's easy when you're in the United States to depersonalize all that's happening over there.
And so we don't have an interest in it. You know, there were people in this case who said, "We don't have any interest here. I mean there's no oil. If there were oil here, we'd stop this." So we'd rather fight for oil than to save lives. I don't think so. I don't think that's what this country really believes or what we stand for. So I do get emotional about this. Because when you can do good, you should
This is a man who, unlike Bush, I trust with a muscular humanitarian foreign policy. My only concern... this doesn't seem to square with a comment Rather made after the interview was over, that Clark didn't think Iraq was a case of genocide justifying invasion. I think it's fairly clear, especially in hindsight - and maybe hindsight is the key - that it was. I'm not sure if this reflects Clark's actual position, or a misperception of Rather's. I'm not the only one concerned by this (see comments in the Clark Community Network thread on the interview here, here, here and elsewhere throughout the whole thread) and I'll be following up if I can clarify his actual position. In any case, I think it's clear what his visceral reaction to such a situation is, and perhaps this is just a case of confusion following his campaigns bungling of things over the last few weeks.
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> My only concern... this doesn't seem to square with a
> comment Rather made after the interview was over, that
> Clark didn't think Iraq was a case of genocide justifying
> invasion. I think it's fairly clear, especially in
> hindsight - and maybe hindsight is the key - that it was.
I'm sure you remember the discussions in the mid-90s, Wozz, about why we were intervening in the Balkans and not Rwanda...or East Timor, or even North Korea, whose policies are effectively genocidal. The general response centered around the Balkans' being in Europe, and the idea of "ethnic cleansing." In other words, 50 years after the Battle of Berlin, Europe is standing by as another Hitler commits atrocities. It's tempting to view the Balkan conflict and our intervention in a rosy light, especially given the mess the current administration has made of Afghanistan and Iraq, but it's hypocritical -- unless we're committed to intervene in all genocidal circumstances. And, I might add, unless we're committed to a greater measure of social justice here at home, where it's arguable that our incarceration policies are a kind of genocide.
As for intervening in Iraq from humanitarian concerns -- that mission's far from over. If we miraculously permit them to develop a real democracy, and if that democracy functions well enough to rebuild their economy after we pull out, you'll still have to consider the price we paid to get that done: the hatred of many, many people around the world, the re-establishment of military pre-emption as a geopolitical strategy, and a staggering financial burden for our children.
Manful tears are far better than the tin-horn bravado of Spurious George, but it might be better to put our house in order first before forcing others to do the same.
It is not at all arguable that our incarceration policies are a kind of genocide. Not at all. Wrong, yes, genocide, no. Nothing thats going on in this country - and lets keep in mind I don't like Bush's domestic policies any more than anyone else does - remotely approaches genocide. Thats just plain silly.
I don't think we went about Iraq the right way - I've repeated this over and over so I won't go into detail - but I still think the Iraqi people are better off despite the mess of things we've made.
My concern is soley that Rather's comment didn't reflect any possible nuance in the General's position on whether what Saddam was doing to Iraqi's was genocidal. I'd like to see some more exploration of this topic by Clark himself to clarify his actual position. Based on his comments on Bosnia (and Rwanda for that matter) I find it hard to reconcile Rather's statement.