The Unappreciated General International Herald Tribune The General Who Did Too Good a Job By Patrick B. Pexton Tuesday, May 2, 2000; Page A23 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A51403-2000May1 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.Elizabeth Drew
New York Book Review
Clark displeased the defense secretary, Bill Cohen, and General Hugh Shelton, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by arguing strenuously that—contrary to Clinton's decision— the option of using ground troops in Kosovo should remain open. But the problem seems to have gone further back. Some top military leaders objected to the idea of the US military fighting a war for humanitarian reasons. (Clark had also favored military action against the genocide in Rwanda.)Clark's view on Kosovo, shared by Tony Blair and other European leaders, was that Clinton, by stating that ground troops would not be used there —a position Clinton took for domestic political reasons—gave the Serbs a military advantage. Similarly, Clark wasn't allowed to use helicopter gunships for fear that they might be shot down, despite the fact that the helicopters didn't need to fly over Kosovo itself and the helicopters' missiles could have been more precise in hitting targets than bombers flying at 15,000 feet.
The argument over whether there should be even contingency planning for the use of NATO ground troops in Kosovo (at the time, it appeared that they would have to fight their way in) caused a serious clash between Clinton and Blair, particularly when they met in April 1999 at the White House residence on the eve of a NATO summit.
A close Clinton associate has told me that "to this day" Clinton regrets that he removed the option of ground troops.
Clark's conduct of the Kosovo war, and his earlier participation as the US military negotiator in the meetings in Dayton following the war in Bosnia, earned him the admiration of several of the civilians he had worked with. Strobe Talbott, then the deputy secretary of state, reminded me recently that Clark is, after all, the only Supreme Allied Commander of NATO who actually had to fight a war, "and it ended in victory." Talbott told me that he found Clark to be "extraordinarily determined and able, and open to working with diplomats and civilians, US and foreign." Talbott pointed out that Clark, in commanding the Kosovo war, had had to deal daily with nineteen nations.
Berger, who has not endorsed any of the presidential candidates, also speaks highly of Clark. Richard Holbrooke, under whom Clark served at the Dayton negotiations, is a friend of Clark's and supports his candidacy. Michael Gordon, the Times's able military reporter, who covered the Kosovo war, wrote of Clark in early October that "while NATO's military campaign was not perfect by any means...the general's judgment of... critical issues seems pretty solid when viewed in perspective; a humanitarian wrong was righted and NATO won its first and only war."
—October 22, 2003
high altitude gradual bombing was not Clark's plan. In fact, Clark didn't like that plan because it reminded him so much of Vietnam.
He put his 34 year career on the line to attempt to do what was right...and yes, he paid for it with an early retirement.
In the end, what matters are the facts....and the facts are that there are 1.3 million Albanians who are grateful to the General for having the courage to do more than just talk a good game and keep handing out promises of "coming to the rescue, one day".
For those folks, what we say has little consequences to them. They are alive, and for them, that's much more important than this debate.
Here's some information.....from a "not very friendly" author, who still is saying what I am saying, even in painting Clark in an unflattering light (most which I have debunked). Point is that the Air war was not Clark's plan...and he did lose his job for wanting "boots on the ground".
The Irony is that the war was still won with Clark not fighting it the way that he felt would have been most effective under the circumstances, and yet his threats to fight it the way that he prescribed to the enemy is what actually got Milosovic to retreat.
Clark has been unwilling to describe Allied Force as an airpower success. The now-retired SACEUR, appearing in May at National Defense University in Washington, D.C., declared to all assembled that airpower could not be expected to do much in future armed conflict. "Boots on the ground," he said, would be needed for decisive military action.Incredibly, Clark's 479-page memoir does not even mention the Air Force B-2 stealth bomber-one of the war's most effective weapons-much less recognize the B-2's key contribution to the success of the operation.
In contrast, the Army's AH-64 Apache attack helicopter (the core of Clark's boots-on-the-ground fantasy) gets extended and favorable attention-despite the fact that it did not ever engage in combat.However, Clark had misgivings about airpower. He believed that the limited NATO air strikes had been effective in Bosnia in 1995 (Operation Deliberate Force), but his professional view of airpower was shaped in the 1970s, a time in which, as a student at the Army's Command and General Staff College, he researched and wrote a thesis about the "ineffectiveness" of Operation Rolling Thunder in Vietnam.
Clark's skepticism about airpower was only reinforced by what he thought he knew about Desert Storm. The general believed (incorrectly) that the Gulf War coalition's airpower hit only about 10 percent of the Iraqi forces.
It was exactly this obsession with trying to put boots on the ground in the form of an invasion in Kosovo that likely cost Clark his job as SACEUR. Even in its rockiest periods, the US military Chiefs and White House officials offered steady support for the NATO air campaign. Clark, however, lobbied hard for a NATO decision to gear up for land war.
Clark had warned Albright that the Serbs would most likely attack the civilian population in Kosovo as soon as air strikes started. Worse, NATO could do nothing to prevent it. It would be "a race" between NATO air strikes and what the Serb forces could do on the ground, and in the short term, Clark said of the Serbs: "They can win the race."
Meanwhile, Clark was doing his utmost to get Apache helicopters, Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) ballistic missiles, and lead elements of Army ground forces into theater to turn up the pressure on Milosevic. By midApril, Clark had developed a very strong interest in a ground option because he wanted a backup plan to pull out in case the NATO air campaign fizzled. The potential outcome of the air attacks was "unknowable," he said, and "without a ground force, there was no assurance that we could actually force Milosevic out of Kosovo."
Clark wanted the Apaches to rapidly target and strike Serb ground forces, and he had asked for them the day before the start of Allied Force. Although he did not receive authorization to employ them during the air campaign, the Apaches were a consuming interest.
A backup plan was a prudent step, but Clark ultimately pursued the ground option with a personal determination stronger than anything else he did during Allied Force. He estimated the air campaign effectiveness would peak by July then start to diminish. However, good summer weather, support from Albania, and NATO's firepower advantage meant that ground operations could force the Serbs out, Clark thought. Clark also felt that visible preparations for ground operations would "significantly raise the pressure on Milosevic." By "working backward from the first snowfalls in the mountains of Albania," he decided that he must have national decisions from the NATO allies "to begin preparation of the ground forces on May 1."
Clark's urge to champion a ground campaign could not have come at a worse time. He took his plan to Washington during the NATO 50th anniversary summit where there was arrayed against him a formidable lack of interest. The Macedonians refused to let NATO use their territory for offensive operations. The NATO allies, many with long experience of peacekeeping in Bosnia, were not eager to insert ground troops. Throughout Washington, the ground option was a nonstarter. Shelton warned Clark not to lobby for the ground option behind the scenes at the NATO summit. "If that option is going to be sold, it will be sold by the President, not by you," Shelton told Clark. The Secretary of Defense, William S. Cohen, ordered Clark to say nothing about ground forces during the NATO meetings. "We have to make this air campaign work, or we'll both be writing our résumés," Cohen added.
http://www.afa.org/magazine/Sept2001/0901clark.asp
