There is a misconception about the role that a four star general plays in formation of policy within the United States Armed Forces. The problems and solutions put on the desk of someone rising through the ranks within the armed forces is not simply a matter of how many tanks are situated in that person's command, but moreso the health, welfare and well being of the people that are part of that unit.
Below is a quick discussion of the types of issues that General Clark was faced with during his tenure as Supreme Allied Commander Europe and as Commander at Fort Irwin in California.
From seeing these types of interviews more than a few times, it becomes apparent why Gert Clark is often referred to as "The General's General"!
Corey Renzella: General Clark, you were in the military for over thirty years; practically your entire adult life. It's obvious, therefore, that you have foreign policy credentials, but what in your career has prepared you for the domestic challenges that you will surely face if elected President.
Wesley Clark: Well, I was responsible in every stage of the military for the people that served under me, and for the families that were there. And what we discovered in the volunteer army was that you couldn't ignore these people. The army's sixty percent of more married. And so, their housing, the schools the children went to, the availability of health care, the time off they had with their families, the ability to get the children babysitters or later child development center spaces, all that was very important to being able to build a unit and a team. And so, like every other leader in the army, I was very concerned with it.
When I was the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe I had forty-four thousand schoolchildren located in England, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Italy and Turkey. And we worried about those schools. They were funded by the Department of Defense. They were my responsibility. And the students that were there were children of the people that worked for me. And so we had to make sure the curriculum was right, the funding was right, the administration for it was right, the parent teacher student associations were right. We changed the curriculum, we changed the leadership in some of the schools. We put in new procedures. We tried to give greater local control. We got rid of Mathland. We fought to get Headstart in those schools and so forth. But I worried equally about health care. The doctors, the hours the clinics were open.
When I was the commander at Fort Irwin out in the Mojave destert, we were a complete isolated community. I held Town Hall meetings. I owned everything on that post. I remember driving down post one day and my wife said "You see that big pothole?!". I said "Yes dear". She said "That's your pothole!". She said "Your engineers, they've been threatening to fix that pothole for a week and it's still there! When are you going to do something about it?". I said "Yes dear". And she said "By the way", she said, "Do you know that your commissary is out of Pampers?!". I said "No dear, but I'll fix that too."
I mean, I was responsible for the whole kit and kaboodle. And so, I've been on the delivery end. I never made a law about social services but when people talk about those laws I see the faces of people who came to my office. I see memorial services where we honored people who were killed in line of duty and in one case a child who was killed by an angry parent in the home. And when I think about those cases and those laws, to me they have very deep personal significance. So I've been on the delivery end of the social work in a way that probably no other candidate has been.
I can hardly wait to get on the other end and fix some of the problems I've seen in this country as I've lived through it for thirty-five years.
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