These ones are a bit older, but there is one in particular that really gave me a new sense of the whole being relieved of command thing in Kosovo.
(This one appeared in the Washington Post)
The Unappreciated General
The General Who Did Too Good a Job
By Patrick B. Pexton
Tuesday, May 2, 2000; Page A23
<snip>
Clark disapproved the gradualism of the initial bombing campaign against Belgrade. He wanted to hit hard and massively. But NATO governments and diplomats in Washington felt Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic would yield after only a few bombs and cruise missiles, as he had in Bosnia. They were wrong. Clark, who was part of the delegation that negotiated the Dayton accords with Milosevic, knew Kosovo was integral to Serb identity and to Milosevic's rise to power. He would not give it up easily.
When it became clear the initial NATO bombing wasn't working, Clark pushed for every airplane he could get, much to the dismay of the U.S. Air Force.
Indeed, one of the unsung accomplishments of Kosovo is how quickly Clark built up air power--far faster than was done in Desert Storm. Clark prodded and cajoled the Europeans and the White House into accepting expanded, and riskier, target lists. He ordered 50 Apache attack helicopters to take the battle to the Serb ground troops, only to see the force reduced in size and then left to sit in Albania while the White House and Pentagon fretted about casualties.
Clark also was right about readying troops for an invasion. The preparations for a ground war helped persuade Milosevic to surrender.More presciently, Clark was right about the Russians. When fewer than 200 lightly armed Russian peacekeepers barnstormed from Bosnia to the Pristina airport in Kosovo to upstage the arrival of NATO peacekeepers, Clark was rightly outraged. Russians did not win the war, and he did not want them to win the peace. Clark asked NATO helicopters and ground troops to seize the airport before the Russians could arrive. But a British general, absurdly saying he feared World War III
(in truth the Russians had no cards to play), appealed to London and Washington to delay the order.
The result was a humiliation for NATO, a tonic for the Russian military and an important lesson for the then-obscure head of the Russian national security council, Vladimir Putin. As later Russian press reports showed, Putin knew far more about the Pristina operation than did the Russian defense or foreign ministers.
It was no coincidence that a few weeks afterward, Russian bombers buzzed NATO member Iceland for the first time in a decade. A few weeks after that, with Putin as prime minister, Russian troops invaded Chechnya. Putin learned the value of boldness in the face of Western hesitation. Clark learned that he had no backup in Washington.more...
This one is from Newsweek:
Warrior's Rewards
NATO's military commander won in Kosovo but not in Washington. Now he has paid with his job.
By John Barry and Christopher Dickey,
Aug. 9, 1999
Gen. Wesley Clark, supreme Allied Commander in Europe, waged and won NATO's campaign for Kosovo without losing a single soldier in action. For the U.S. military, the victory was uniquely—historically—bloodless. Last week Clark learned it was also thankless. In a midnight call from Washington, Clark was told he'd be relieved of his command at NATO next April, a few months earlier than he'd anticipated. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Hugh Shelton, presented the decision as a simple matter of giving the post to another deserving officer. Clark, who got the call in the middle of a quick trip to the Baltic republics, was caught off balance. He'd seen Shelton in the United States just the week before. Not a word had been breathed of his replacement. According to one source privy to the conversation, Clark told Shelton the move would be read as a vote of no-confidence in his leadership.
Shelton, brisk and businesslike, said there was no way around it. His replacement—Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—would be forced by law to retire if he weren't given a new slot by April. Clark wasn't buying it. In two conversations that night and again the next day, sources say, he argued that his replacement would be a blow to U.S. efforts to reshape NATO. Shelton wasn't moved. Clark, the 54-year-old warrior, was going to have to step aside for Ralston, the 55-year-old Washington insider.
<snip>
Yet the core problem was at least as much one of personality as of doctrine. Since his days at West Point, Clark has been something of a loner. (His favorite sport was long-distance swimming. He still tries to work out in the pool every day: lap after arduous lap, oblivious to the outside world.) Clark gloried in being the lone warrior, the take-no-prisoners intellectual. "It's very difficult to stop this ambitious man," said one of his European peers during the war. His colleagues might admire and envy Clark, but few actually liked him.
<snip>
Should Clark have been surprised to be shown the door? He rubbed even his admirers the wrong way. Subordinates wearied of his high-pressure attention to minute detail.
A European NATO officer who worked closely with Clark remembered him during the air war "with his little laptop being able to see all the aircraft maneuvering in the air war." (Tatiana: Personally, I think this just shows his dedication and the fact that he takes his job and the men and women under his command seriously.) As another NATO veteran put it, "He does get in people's knickers to some extent." When Clark was assigned to work with an old West Point classmate, he suggested that since they might compete for promotions they should put their friendship on hold.
<snip>
Clark still has his fans at NATO headquarters. It was Clark who balanced the demands and misgivings of 19 nations and armies through 78 long days.
That showed a great political touch; indeed, Wesley Clark may be too much of a politician for some soldiers—even if he is too much of a soldier for the politicians. During the Kosovo war, that made him "the perfect man for the job," said a top NATO official. When the war was over, it also made him the perfect man to dump.
(more...)
Some fascinating articles at this site and a bit of insight into the man that is Wesley Clark.
http://wesleyclark.h1.ru/departure.htm
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