Wesley Clark Interview

Newsweek

I saw it starting to go wrong before the [2000] election. I met with Condi Rice. She told me she believed that American troops shouldn’t be keeping the peace—they were the only ones who could kill people and conquer countries, and that’s what they should be focused on doing. What she was telling me [was] that she, as a potential Republican national-security adviser, didn’t support our engagement in Europe. So I saw it going wrong from there.

I’ve always felt the United Nations should have been involved. You need the U.N. for legitimacy, to get nations to cough up forces.

The world expects something more of an American president than to prance around on a flight deck dressed up like [a] pilot. He’s expected to be a leader. That’s my fundamental issue with it. It doesn’t reflect the gravitas of the office. Furthermore, it’s a little phony.