Panel II of a Hearing of a Hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - NATO Enlargement

Federal News Service

HEADLINE: PANEL II OF A HEARING OF THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE

SUBJECT: NATO ENLARGEMENT

CHAIRED BY: SENATOR RICHARD LUGAR (R-IN)

PANEL II LOCATION: 216 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

WITNESSES: GENERAL WESLEY K. CLARK, USA (RET.), FORMER SACEUR; AND WILLIAM KRISTOL, EDITOR, THE WEEKLY STANDARD

BODY:
SEN. BOXER: Yes. Mr. Kristol, I just have to say a couple of words about some of the things you said. In terms of the resolution in 1998, which I voted for, for regime change, it had nothing to do with preventive war at all. If you read it, what it talked about was helping the people in the opposition to make the changes there. So that's number one. As someone who voted for that, I can tell you I wasn't voting to go to war. That's number one. I was trying to do what General Clark suggests, which is prevent war-prevent war by supporting those folks who would in fact overthrow Saddam.

Now, I also-I couldn't believe when you said that it was stability in the Middle East that created Osama bin Laden. It was in fact instability in Afghanistan which allowed him to move in there, into that void. And the weapons that were obtained by the Taliban, that eventually found their way into al Qaeda and the rest were remnants of that war and the fact that we walked away. And I just don't like when history is rewritten, since I lived through a lot of it as a senator, a member of Congress. I also remember being stunned when Donald Rumsfeld went to sit across from Hussein, Saddam Hussein, and tell him the good news that the Reagan administration was taking him off the terrorist list. And when we found those weapons of mass destruction, and the inspectors as you know destroyed more than were destroyed by all our bombs, the components came from this country to a great degree. They have the stamp of our companies on them. So I don't think that we should rewrite history. I think we need to look at it in an honest way.

I also appreciate your point of view, Mr. Kristol, and I have a great deal of respect for you. But I don't think that you and General Clark have in any way come out with the same vision. Because I took the notes of what you said. And when General Clark talked, he didn't just say it's better when the world likes us. That's trivializing what he said. He said we are safer when we work with the world, and that is serious. Maybe you think we're safer when you have so much of the world right now having attitudes toward us which are, let us say, way beyond disrespectful. I don't think so. And I think you're right when you say we need to talk to the people. And I support anything we can do to get to the people and tell them about America and what we are like and what our people are like.

And when General Clark said we should prevent war, not wage preventive war. That is very different than your statement which is Iraq-if Iraq is to be a model, not an exception, we are probably going to have to have more of these coalitions of the willing.

So I think that, Mr. Chairman, the juxtaposition of these two fine people here, who are so smart and can articulate their position so well, is just a brilliant stroke. Because as I look at my state, a lot of the arguments that are coming right out here are the arguments we're hearing back there. And, needless to say, knowing me as you all do, I do believe we are safer when we work with the world. And it is hard. Diplomacy is hard. But war shouldn't be an instrument of foreign policy. It should be a last resort. Now, everybody says that. In due respect, Mr. Kristol didn't. I mean, he basically said, Look, Iraq may be the model. And that leads to Senator Biden's point: Well, what's next? What's the next in these great models? And maybe if I didn't have to eulogize every single day more and more Californians who were dying here-and I'm up way beyond 20 -- and a lot of them are leaving little kids and spouses and the rest-you know, maybe this could be an interesting abstract conversation.

I just am going to read from Candidate George Bush and ask General Clark to comment on it. He said, quote, "Let me tell you what I am worried about. I am worried about an opponent who uses nation- building and the military in the same sentence. See, our view of the military is for our military to be properly prepared to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place." And I think that really in many ways is what General Clark has said here today. And I wonder if, General Clark, you could comment on those thoughts.

MR. CLARK: Well, thank you very much, senator. I think that many things have changed as I look at this administration's foreign policy from the prescriptions that were offered by then Governor Bush during the campaign. And he did speak of a humble America then, and one that was respectful. And he was concerned about nation-building. And to some extent some of these changes have been the essential changes of a group of people who stayed out of government during the 1990s-watched from the sidelines and didn't understand the actual demands on the United States government. I am talking about the criticism of nation-building. In fact, dirty word or not, it is something that the United States has to do. And this administration was dragged reluctantly into the problem of resolving the dispute in Macedonia in June of 2001. U.S. reluctance to use NATO and let NATO get involved in that period deepened the conflict and cost lives, even in Macedonia. I remember getting calls at the time from this. This was before the terrible events of 9/11. Something happened after 9/11. We don't know what that was. No one can clearly understand it. It may be, as Senator Chafee says, all along there was a desire to get Saddam. I've read books in which this was apparently discussed inside the administration: Let's get him. I've heard it was discussed in the campaign, although I don't remember-I never personally heard it discussed during the campaign, but I think you can find records of people talking about this.

I don't know what happened. But what I know is that in life, and in war, in diplomacy, there's sort of two kinds of plans. There's plans that might work and there are plans that won't work. And when you're trying to protect America's role in the world, and you line up all the things that are important to us in priority order, if you set this nation up, nearly 300 million, against the rest of the world, and take away the legitimacy that our values, our rule of law, our 225 years of history has given us, you are setting us on a course that will at some point, despite the power of the American military, despite the courage of the young men and women in uniform, despite the incredible competence we have seen displayed on the battlefield in Iraq-at some point it's going to run into the weight of other people's interests, concerns, their notions of legitimacy, and it will bounce back against us. So it may not be in Iraq-it may be in Syria. It may be in whatever comes after that, if there is anything after Iraq-we don't know. But I do think that the logic that was in Governor Bush's statement about the need to prevent war is the right logic.

The problem with war as an instrument of foreign policy is it's usually counterproductive to try to change people's minds by killing them-or their relatives. And so in occasion-twice in the 20th century, against two separate adversaries, we defeated their armed forces, we changed their governments, and it worked out great, and these two countries are our allies, and have been staunch allies against an outside threat. But in most cases it leaves lingering hatreds and resentments and problems that later generations of diplomats and unfortunately soldiers have to clean up. That was the record after World War I. That's the persistent record in Europe. It's the record after any number of conflicts in the Middle East. And I pray that won't be the record after the work that we are trying to do in Iraq.

And I just wanted to address one more thing, because I don't know if I'll have a chance to come back to it. Mr. Kristol said that we probably ended up fundamentally in agreement on Iraq. I am not sure about that. I could never personally see-I always felt that we would have to deal with Saddam Hussein in one way or another. I wasn't-I was never convinced that an improved program of sanctions and containment wouldn't work, although eventually such a program might leak, and we might have to deal with him. I could never see quite the sense of urgency for going after Saddam when we did.

If you are inside an administration that does these things, you view it as leadership. When you're on the outside and you look at it, you view it as something that's more or less not-it's not totally understandable. You can't quite grasp it. I couldn't quite grasp it. I couldn't quite see the connection with Saddam Hussein and the war on terror. Because of all the Arab states, he was the least likely, it seemed to me, to actually be working against al Qaeda. And that's what the agency testified up here on the Hill and said-unless we posed a critical threat to him. That-on the other hand, we're in it. I support you know our total and complete success in the men and women in the armed forces, and I am concerned about the aftermath. And if that's where Bill Kristol comes out, I hope he'll associate himself and his magazine with me.

SEN. BOXER: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.