Profiles in Convenience
What Wesley Clark and his Democratic rivals lack is courage
By
JOE KLEIN
Sunday, Oct. 19, 2003
In 1982 Colin Powell called Wesley Clark "an officer of the rarest
potential." In 1978 Alexander Haig said Clark was "an officer of
impeccable character." We know this because the Clark for President
campaign released 200 pages of similar encomiums last week, internal
evaluations covering 30 years of the general's Army career—a
blindingly impressive document, the stuff of legend and political ads
to come. Unfortunately, the paeans to Clark's character, courage and
leadership came during a week when he was showing none
of the above with regard to the $87 billion that President Bush has
requested to maintain the American military presence in Iraq and
begin the reconstruction of that country.
Clark's initial position was laughable. He refused to say how he
would vote on the $87 billion because he wasn't a member of Congress.
Chastened by a Washington Post editorial that called his position
"astonishing," he retreated: the $87 billion, he said, should be sent
"back to the drawing board." The general was suffering from
laryngitis when I called, so an aide told me that Clark favored two
separate bills. One would be money for the troops; the other would be
for reconstruction—with a dollar amount scrubbed more carefully than
the Bush Administration's rather flabby $20 billion and with greater
international cooperation, a quicker, clearer transition to Iraqi
authority and restrictions on the contracts going to American
corporations like Halliburton.
Sounds great. Trouble is, that's not what Congress was voting on last
week. It was voting on the $87 billion, up or down. In that case, the
aide said, Clark would have to be opposed. Opposed to funding the
troops on the ground? I asked. No, he's in favor of that, I was told.
But he would still vote against the $87 billion? Yes, Clark was
opposed to giving the President a blank check.
Clark was not alone in this embarrassment. I had similar
conversations with representatives of the Howard Dean and John Kerry
campaigns, and with Senator Kerry himself—who expressed outrage over
the way the Administration had gone to war and about Bush's
dangerously unplanned post-Saddam campaign. Both Dean and Kerry said
they would vote for the $87 billion if it was funded by rescinding
the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% of taxpayers. Kerry co-sponsored an
amendment proposing just that, which was defeated, leaving the
impression that he was more concerned about who was paying for the
$87 billion than about how it was being spent. Senator John Edwards
took a similar position; he also voted with Kerry in favor of a
successful but questionable amendment that would turn $10 billion of
the reconstruction money into a loan.
To be fair, the Democrats' near inchoate indignation is
understandable. Bush has got us into a real mess in Iraq. Despite
last week's tepid support from the U.N. Security Council, the U.S.
will not be receiving very much military or financial aid from the
world because there is continuing outrage over America's unilateral
decision to go to war. The original casus belli was, at the very
least, oversold. The post-Saddam period has been marked by American
arrogance and incompetence. The prognosis for Iraq is grave. It is
not even clear that the three main ethnic and religious groups—the
Kurds, Iraqi Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims—can be knitted into a
coherent country. But these are not plausible reasons to oppose the
$87 billion. The only real alternative to rebuilding Iraq, whatever
that takes, is an American withdrawal that would leave the region in
chaos and stand as a significant defeat in the global campaign
against Islamic radicalism.
My guess is that each of the Democratic presidential candidates who
"opposed" the $87 billion would have voted the opposite way if his
vote had been critical for passage. Their opposition was equal parts
fury and political convenience—the polls say a solid majority of
Americans are against spending more money in Iraq. It was also a way
for those who favored the war, like Kerry and Edwards, to make amends
with the peaceniks who dominate the Democratic primary electorate. Of
course, Bush was playing politics too, by combining into one bill the
popular funds for troops with the unpopular funds for reconstruction.
But the President had the moral high ground: clearly, more money is
needed to fund the Iraq occupation.
Is it too much to ask that politics be put aside on this one issue
of transcendent importance, where lives are literally at stake?
Happily, Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt did the right thing last
week. "I will support the $87 billion," Gephardt said, "because it is
the only responsible course of action. We must not send an ambiguous
message to our troops, and we must not send an uncertain message to
our friends and enemies in Iraq." This will not help Gephardt in
Iowa, but it was an act of courage—Lieberman has made a habit of
such acts in this campaign—and a stark contrast to the position
taken by both Kerry and Clark, the two alleged warriors in the
Democratic field.
 Email the Columnist |  More Columns By Joe Klein
Joe Klein is a senior writer for TIME Magazine based in New York and Washington, D.C. He wrote the critically-acclaimed novel "Primary Colors." [more]
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