Wes Clark & Robin Wright on Egypt
(transcript from Piers Morgan show)
General Clark, it seems that the Americans and the administration in America have got themselves into sort of a devil and a deep sea here situation because they're dammed if they do, dammed if they don't. What is the proper course of action now, do you think, for President Obama to take?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), FORMER NATO SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER: I think the proper course of action is to be very, very steady. Do not break relations with the Egyptian military. We don't like what happened. If we can work with both sides and pull them away from this confrontation that's looming or will intensify, that's what we need to be doing.
Look, the Egyptian military is doing what they think they have to do to keep Egypt as a modern country. They are responding to the will of the Egyptian people. They went overboard, somehow, the police, I don't know how all these people got killed. That's a big failure in somebody's procedures.
But, Piers, I was a major in the U.S.-European command in the fall of 1978 and the spring of 1979, working for General Alexander Haig. We went through this exact scenario with the shah of Iran. We didn't like him. He wasn't democratic enough. His secret police were really tough and they tortured people, and so we encouraged the emergence of a democratic movement.
The generals tried to warn the Americans, they said be careful, you're playing with fire and you're going to let Ayatollah Khomeini come back in. We sent in an American general over to tell the Iranian generals back off. So for about 60 days we kept the military from intervening in Iran.
During that period, the revolution coalesced, the military forces fell apart, extreme Islamists took over and at that point, the Carter administration said, oh my goodness, get the general to take control, don't let this happen. And the general said, we waited too long, we have no forces, and a few months later all the generals had been shot, and we have Iran today.
So I think there's an important lesson. Of course we want democracy. We don't want slaughter in the streets. But this is Egypt's problem. They know it better than we do. The military has been influenced by the United States. They are westernized. We should encourage the military to work with the police, minimize the violence, try to move this towards an inclusive democratic government.
MORGAN: OK. Ivan Watson, here's the problem with all this, which is we're basically right back where we were, only Mubarak is not there but he may as well be. And what has happened to the idealistic dream of the Arab spring?
IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I don't think we're right back where we were, Piers, because in 2011, two and a half years ago there was the excitement and the enthusiasm about -- and hope for a democratic process, and that has been killed now, and we have hundreds and hundreds of dead people and their blood on top of that.
And you don't -- you can't promise now to Egyptian people to wave a wand and have democratic elections now and that will make everything better because the people who won those elections are some of the people who are being butchered in the streets and perhaps some of them are also carrying out reprisal attacks.
So you don't have that optimistic goal to push the Egyptian people towards and for them to be excited about. Instead, we have a much bigger crisis in our hands. How do we stop this cycle of violence and if the security forces use force against these possible marches that the Muslim Brotherhood is calling upon on Friday, that could continue this already terrible and tragic loss of life where you have bodies stacked up in the mosques.
It will continue if that use of force is repeated again on Friday.
MORGAN: Robin Wright, what is the solution here? Is there a solution? I mean, Ivan painted a very grim picture there and as General Clark said, you know, if you're not very careful, you can end up with another Iran.
ROBIN WRIGHT, MIDDLE EAST ANALYST: I don't think there's any comparison between what happened in Iran and Egypt for many different reasons. But the stakes are enormous here and there are no easy outs.
The problem right now is that there's very little influence that the United States has over Egypt, over the -- the military even though they have been the cornerstone of U.S. relations with Egypt now for more than 40 years. The danger is that the military is headstrong at the moment, and dead set on -- literally dead set on following through on its own agenda to prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from having any role in politics, democratic or otherwise.
And that it is likely to pursue a course that will make it very hard for the U.S. or the international community in general to play any significant role. And that's going to limit the options. Now I suspect there will be a huge debate in Washington very soon over the future of U.S. aid and whether the $1.5 billion that is provided, most of it to the military, should be suspended, should be deferred, that that will be the next step we see in -- from Washington's side.
In Egypt they have a six-month transition and the United States will be watching very closely whether the new constitution is announced next week, next Wednesday, as it's supposed to, whether there are elections that are held, free and fair elections, that are held for both the parliament and the president over the next six months. Those are the big steps that should play out next.
MORGAN: Well, tomorrow obviously will to be a fascinating day. A Friday of anger being promised by the Muslim Brotherhood. We'll see what that takes and we'll see the reaction from the military.
But for now, thank you to you all, to Wesley Clark, to Ivan Watson, Robin Wright. Newt Gingrich, you're staying with me. I'm putting you right back on "The Grill" after the break, which is where my viewers want to see you.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1308/15/pmt.01.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
In fact it's used a lot for that, so ...
There are occasions when it serves a purpose, when the waters already been muddied up for example. There, if you want to play at all, you have to get in the spirit of the thing.
And one of the consequences of not dealing in personalities much is I don't have to defend or attack personalities in pursuit of policy objectives, like you are concerned with here.
I read your stuff too.
and never drank any kool aid. He was first in his class at West Point, and many disliked him, and probably still do, because of his intellect. Its a shame that some/many can't handle a smart general, smart military people.
