Wes Clark Talks About Syria & Compares To Clinton Bombing Iraqi Intelligence Service (NPR-Today)
Last edited Tue Aug 27, 2013, 05:06 PM USA/ET - Edit history (5)
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/08/27/216155784/retired-gen-wesley-clark-talks-about-precedents-and-syria
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Clark told NPR's Melissa Block that the only similarity between what's going on in Syria, today, and what happened during the Allied intervention in Kosovo, is Russia's unwillingness to support a United Nations resolution supporting a strike.
"The Kosovo campaign, first of all, it wasn't just the bombing that drove the Serbs out. It was the fact that they were engaged with NATO that the Serbs knew that if they didn't accede to pull their forces out and let the Albanians return home that NATO had the capability and was starting to do the planning to put a ground invasion in," Clark said.
The Obama administration has said that regime change would not be the point of any mission in Syria.
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Instead Clark points to attacks directed by President Clinton against the headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service on June 27, 1993.
As Clinton explained at the time, the attack was a "firm and commensurate" response to an Iraqi plot to assassinate President George H.W. Bush. The attacks were swift. For about an hour, U.S. Navy ships launched 23 Tomahawk missiles.
Clark said if the mission in Syria is to prevent the Assad regime from using chemical weapons there are two ways to do it: One is destroying the weapons, which is risky because an explosion can spread toxic elements. The other is to punish the Assad regime by "taking something valuable" by hitting communications infrastructure, intelligence, air defenses or radars.
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"When you start something like this you have to be prepared for an indeterminate length if you have a political objective," Clark said.
However, if the objective is punishment, it can be over quickly with a few missile strikes.
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