Interview with Military Committee Chairman Gen. Paul Vallely

The Center for Security Policy is pleased to announce the first in a series of interviews with members of its Military Committee and National Security Advisory Council. These individuals are among the foremost national security practitioners and thinkers of our time and it is the Center’s hope that these interviews will increase public discourse concerning the security policies of the United States.

The Center was honored to have as its first guest the CSP Military Committee Chairman, Major General Paul Vallely (USA Ret.), a former deputy commander of all U.S. Army forces in the Pacific and co-author of the forthcoming book, “Endgame – The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror.” He agreed to speak about some of the most pressing issues of the day.

Among them, Gen. Vallely was asked to comment on former Clinton and Bush Administration official Richard Clarke’s recent controversial statement that President Bush has “done a terrible job on the war against terrorism.” Gen. Vallely summarized that Richard Clarke “is much like Paul O’Neill, sour grapes.” For it was Clarke who “was ineffective when he was in the office for counterterrorism because there were no gains made in combating global terrorism.” Conversely, Gen. Vallely noted that President Bush “has done a tremendous job in fighting the War on Terror,” citing the takedown of the regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq and the ostensible conversion of Libya’s Moammar Qadhafi as evidence.

Gen. Vallely also strongly criticized Senator John Kerry’s belief that the War on Terror “is far less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering law enforcement operation.” Gen. Vallely remarked: “We found out that it was not a law enforcement operation by the mere fact that when you look at the web of terror it is made up of nation states that support terrorism and it provided the opportunity for the likes of al-Qaeda to prosper and grow and spread their hate and their terror throughout the world. And so when you have nation states that are sponsoring terrorism then those regimes have to either change their modus operandi or military action or regime change has to take place.” In the General’s opinion, the Democratic presidential candidate just “doesn’t get it… [This] is a global war on terror and a nexus of terror that has to be eradicated.”

Finally, he pointed out that the death of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin was “a very good thing” for the War on Terror and he encouraged the government of Israel “to either incarcerate or take out all the Hamas leaders, Islamic Jihad leaders, all the terrorists, including Hezbollah to the North.” As for Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat, Gen. Vallely said that he “recommended to the Israelis a year ago that he [Arafat] not wake up in the morning. I think they need to make him disappear.”

The Center would like to thank Gen. Vallely for taking the time to participate in the first of a series of interviews that will be conducted throughout the year by the Center for Security Policy.

Click here to read the entire transcript of this interview.