A few years ago (2009), Gen. Wesley Clark (US
Army, retired) spoke at a meeting sponsored by FORA. TV. In a
little-noted speech, he urged Americans to look not at the
saber-rattle or fiasco of the moment, but at the strategic
thinking that lies behind events and defines American foreign policy
over the long-term, especially in regard to the Middle East and
Southwest Asia.
Gen. Clark told of a visit he made to
the Pentagon just ten days after 9/11, while one wing of the building
was literally still smoldering from one of the terrorist hits. When
stopping by to see an friend in the office of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, that colleague shared with him a classified document that
referred to not just a U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, but a strategy
that would have seen our troops committed to effecting regime change
in seven countries over a five-year period: the one mentioned above,
as well as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan and Iran.
Now, a
decade later, two of countries on the list have been invaded, one has
fallen to an internal take-over with external assistance, one is in a
state of active conflict with thousands killed, and another is being
threatened. (To say nothing of Tunisia and Egypt, which must seem
like "bonus" entries in the win column of the grand
strategy.)
The list, and the strategy of which it
was a part, were not the product of the Pentagon's own planners.
Clark recalled another conversation he had had with then-Deputy
Assistant Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz back in 1991, when the
outlines of such a series of moves were even then being formulated
under the rubric of the Project for a New American Century.
Wolfowitz, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and others in what is
usually called the neo-con camp, were "thinking big" about
the prospects for American hegemony in a new, post-Cold War era, and
they had the juice to make it happen.
Speaking as a former military man,
as an erstwhile vice-presidential contender and as a citizen, Gen. Clark said, "If
you are an American, you ought to be concerned about the strategy
for the United States in this region. What is our aim? What is our
purpose? Why are Americans dying in that region?"
Since he spoke
those words, many thousands more Americans, NATO troops and
indigenous residents have lost their lives, but precious little has
been said about long-term intentions.
Before we go down
the road to war again, shouldn't we follow Clark's prescient advice and ask some hard questions of our politicians -- including both
President Obama and his would-be successor? What is the end-game?
Is it world domination? If so, are we ever going to get a chance to
vote on that?
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