"Who Makes US Foreign Policy?" -- Col. Lawrence Wilkerson on Reality Asserts Itself, TRNN (1/3)

[KoKo]

Who Makes US Foreign Policy? - Col. Lawrence Wilkerson on Reality Asserts Itself (1/3)
- October 3, 14

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay. This is another edition of Reality Asserts Itself. And the reality asserting itself these days is more than troubling. Geopolitical rivalry is intense and sharpening. Ukraine is just one recent symptom of the issue. The climate is apparently already affecting the United States, according to the latest scientific reports, and the IPCC report is saying that we are facing severe crisis as we move further into this century. Yet public policy is nowhere near catching up to the extent of the crisis. The underlying economic crisis has not been dealt with. The issues that led to the financial collapse in 2008 have not been addressed. The issues of too-big-to-fail, the issue of massive financial speculation and gambling that triggered the crisis have not been mitigated in any serious way by legislation. And most predictions are we're heading into another global, deep recession sooner than later.

Now joining us in the studio to discuss a very serious situation is Col. Lawrence Wilkerson. Larry is a retired United States Army soldier and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson is an adjunct professor at the College of William & Mary where he teaches courses on US national security. He also instructs a senior seminar in the Honors Department at the George Washington University entitled "National Security Decision Making."

[uhnope]

1. back to the rolodex, I see

Lawrence Wilkerson: Good whistleblower gone bad--now he's a professional gadfly/conspiracy theorist who goes on the Kremlin media to self-promote his very wrong predictions about the always-evil US.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026041979

[SamKnause]

2. K&R

Thank you for posting this video.

I listened to the entire series.

It confirmed my suspicions about who controls our government and the globe.

I highly recommend listening to the entire video series.

[tclambert]

3. I thought US foreign policy was set by Exxon Mobil.

[Manifest Destiny]

4. Thank you for the video.

Real News are the best.

[JDPriestly]

5. Thanks. Interesting discussion.

I think that the people, ordinary people and leaders in European countries do have opinions and hopes for peace and for their nations. The Germans wanted reunification. Many, many in Eastern Europe wanted the Russians to get out.

I remember an elderly Polish woman who told me that when she went to the grocery store to buy potatoes, she would buy one for herself and one would go into a barrel for the Russians.

I never quite understood what she meant, but she was just an ordinary woman, and she was trying to convey just how bitterly the Polish people, the ordinary Polish people resented the Russians. Apparently the Polish felt the Russians were taking from Poland. I've never been in Poland or Russia but that was the message I got from the people I knew from Poland.

Trying to get out of Eastern Europe was very common when the Soviets, the Russians, were in charge there.

Of course, things probably changed when the Soviet system ended in Russia. But why shouldn't the Ukraine go its own course if the majority of Ukrainians regardless of their ethnic heritage prefer to be closer to the Western Europeans. Cuba was our neighbor for decades and we had very little to do with it. Russia could just ignore the Ukraine and wait and see. That would be wise in my view.

I don't think that all foreign policy is made in the USA, much less in the White House. Sometimes we respond to what people in other countries think and want. I wonder whether Colonel Wilkerson ever lived abroad other than as an employee of the US government. We get very nationalcentric at times. I met a woman in a village in Austria who told me that the spiritual world was centered in her hometown. I was a bit startled to learn that, but of course, for her it was. We Americans sometimes believe our views are our own when we are responding to the views and desires of others.

[newthinking]

6. Definitely a good watch.

Thanks!

[swilton]

7. A Fascinating Read +++

that is illustrative of how US foreign policy is made is Kwitney's ENDLESS ENEMIES. Although written years ago (starts roughly in the 1960's with the CIA backed assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo), Kwitney describes perfectly the seamless relationships/symbiosis between the CIA, the State Department and corporate America. I don't have current examples on the tip of my tongue - but just consider the numerous presidential/administration appointees that come from corporate America and go into government. This book's focus is on the foreign policy apparatus of the US government and especially, CIA and State. Essentially, Kwitney argues that foreign policy is designed by/for corporations, it is crafted and executed by the CIA (sometimes-frequently through clandestine operations that have a façade to make them appear as something else), and announced publically by the State Department.

Kwitney, the journalist's journalist, draws abundantly from public records (such as the Church Commission) and well sources his work. Unfortunately, he died prematurely from esophageal cancer.

Two references go with this post - again early but powerful illustrations of the discussion. From my experience, they illustrate and explain a great deal to the extent that I bring them out and beat them as dead horses more than once from thread to thread.

Wikkepedia link to Kwitney - note he is an award winning journalist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Kwitny

My second reference is the Belgium film LUMUMBA. Focusing on early African nationalist leader, film illustrates US-western influences in Africa beginning in WW II aftermath in the 1960's. Briefly the Congo wanted independence from Belgium in the aftermath of WWII - a general decolonization wave going through the Third World (Vietnam, India, etc.)...Belgium (puppet to the US) couldn't have the ignorant savages managing their war-material rich resources (rubber, uranium, etc., etc.)...Lumumba a charismatic leader wanting to nationalize resources for his own people got in the way and had to go.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246765/

[swilton]

8. General Wesley Clark

is the kind of 'war profiteer' benefitting from imperialistic US foreign policy that Wilkerson is referring to.

Michael Moore elevated him in 2003 by initiating a grass roots campaign to nominate Clark to run against George W. Bush for president....If one examines Clarks record carefully, his criticism of war efforts are merely opportunistic grand standing. The substance of his criticism is more of a different application of tactic/strategy rather than a deeply principled opposition to war. A classic example is this discussion below with Amy Goodman about his role in the war in Yugoslavia.

AMY GOODMAN: There are more than a hundred journalists and media workers in Iraq who have died. And particularly hard hit are Arab journalists. I mean, you had Tariq Ayoub, the Al Jazeera reporter, who died on the roof of Al Jazeera when the US military shelled Al Jazeera, then went on to shell the Palestine Hotel and killed two reporters, a Reuters cameraman and one from Telecinco in Spain named Jose Couso. Many Arab journalists feel like they have been targeted, the idea of shooting the messenger. But this tough question goes back to your being Supreme Allied Commander in Yugoslavia and the bombing of Radio Television Serbia. Do you regret that that happened, that you did that?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: No, I don’t regret that at all. That was part of the Serb command and control network. And not only that, I was asked to take out that television by a lot of important political leaders. And before I took it out, I twice warned the Serbs we were going to take it out. We stopped, at one news conference in the Pentagon, we planted the question to get the attention of the Serbs, that we were going to target Serb Radio and Television.

AMY GOODMAN: RTS.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Yeah. And that night, in fact, Milosevic got the warning, because he summoned all the foreign journalists to come to a special mandatory party at RTS that night. But we weren’t bombing that night. We put the word out twice before we actually I did it.

AMY GOODMAN: You told CNN, which was also there, to leave?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I told — I used — I think I used CNN to plant the story and to leak it at the Pentagon press conference. But we didn’t tell anyone specifically to leave. What we told them was it’s now a target. And it was Milosevic who determined that he would keep people there in the middle of the night just so there would be someone killed if we struck it. So we struck it during the hours where there were not supposed to be anybody there.

AMY GOODMAN: But you killed civilians.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Six people died.

AMY GOODMAN: I think sixteen. But I think it’s the media — it’s the beauticians, the technicians. It was a civilian target.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Yeah, they were ordered to stay there by Milosevic. Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: But it was a civilian target.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: It was not a civilian target. It was a military target. It was part of the Serb command and control network

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of Amnesty International calling it a war crime?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think it was investigated by the International Criminal Tribunal in Yugoslavia and found to be a legitimate target. So I think it’s perfectly alright for Amnesty International to have their say, but everything we did was approved by lawyers, and every target was blessed. We would not have committed a war crime.

AMY GOODMAN: Upon reflection now and knowing who died there, the young people, the people who worked for RTS, who — as you said, if Milosevic wanted people to stay there, they were just following orders.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, it was a tragedy. But I’ll tell you something. If you want to talk about tragedies, how about this one? We bombed what we thought was a Serb police station in Kosovo. We saw the Serb vehicles. We flew unmanned aerial vehicles over it. And we did everything we could to identify it. And we found that there were Serb police vehicles parked there at night, so we sent an F-16 in, dropped two 500-pound laser-guided bombs and took it out. We killed eighty Albanians who had been imprisoned by the Serbs there. They were trying to escape, and the Serbs locked them up in this farmhouse and surrounded them with vehicles. So, I regret every single innocent person who died, and I prayed every night that there wouldn’t be any innocent people who died. But this is why I say you must use force only as a last resort.

I told this story to the high school kids earlier, but it bears repeating, I guess. We had a malfunction with a cluster bomb unit, and a couple of grenades fell on a schoolyard, and some, I think three, schoolchildren were killed in Nish. And two weeks later, I got a letter from a Serb grandfather. He said, “You’ve killed my granddaughter.” He said, “I hate you for this, and I’ll kill you.” And I got this in the middle of the war. And it made me very, very sad. We certainly never wanted to do anything like that. But in war, accidents happen. And that’s why you shouldn’t undertake military operations unless every other alternative has been exhausted, because innocent people do die. And I think the United States military was as humane and careful as it possibly could have been in the Kosovo campaign. But still, civilians died. And I’ll always regret that.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think cluster bombs should be banned?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: You know, we used, I think 1,400-plus cluster bombs. And there’s a time when you have to use cluster bombs: when they’re the most appropriate and humane weapon. But I think you have to control the use very carefully. And I think we did in Yugoslavia.

AMY GOODMAN: Right now, the US has rejected an international call to ban the use of cluster bombs. On Friday, forty-six countries were in Oslo to develop a new international treaty to ban the use of cluster munitions by — I think it’s 2008. Would you support that?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, you know, people who are against war often make the case by trying to attack the weapons of war and stripping away the legitimacy of those weapons. I’ve participated in some of that. I’d like to get rid of landmines. I did participate in getting rid of laser blinding weapons. And I was part of the team that put together the agreement that got rid of laser blinding weapons. I’d like to get rid of nuclear weapons. But I can’t agree with those who say that force has no place in international affairs. It simply does for this country. And I would like to work to make it so that it doesn’t. But the truth is, for now it does. And so, I can’t go against giving our men and women in uniform the appropriate weapons they need to fight, to fight effectively to succeed on the battlefield, and to minimize their own casualties.

But more importantly the way that weapons sales are globalized, Clark's international consulting firm will stand to profit no matter which side in the Ukraine crisis are buying weapons.

.....The author of three books, “Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo and the Future of Combat,” “Winning Modern War: Iraq, Terrorism and the American Empire” and “A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor, Country,” Clark also serves as Chairman/CEO of Wesley K. Clark & Associates, a strategic consulting firm, and Co-Chairman of Growth Energy........... Clark founded Wesley K. Clark & Associates in 2004, which uses his expertise, relationships, and extensive international reputation and experience in the fields of energy, alternative energy, corporate and national security, logistics, aerospace and defense, and investment banking. He applies his experience and skills in strategic leadership, high technology, training and organizational development to the challenges facing the corporate world – offering a singularly informed and dynamic view of leadership based on honor, conviction and action.

http://wesleykclark.com/about/