General Clark's Critique
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By David Ignatius
Columnist
The Washington Post
Tuesday, September 9, 2003
GENEVA -- How do you say "I told you so" without sounding like you're saying "I told you so"? That is the conundrum facing the Democratic presidential race's leading non-candidate, Wesley Clark.
"Everything I said about Iraq has turned out to be correct," the retired Army general averred in a telephone interview several days ago. He rattled off the concerns he voiced before the invasion: Iraq didn't pose an imminent threat to the United States; it wasn't directly linked to the war on terrorism; an invasion might make the terrorism problem worse; there wasn't an international coalition supporting the war; America had other ways to contain Saddam Hussein.
"This has been a root canal," Clark says of the Iraq campaign. And he warns that the worst may lie ahead: "You could have a catastrophic unwinding of this at virtually any time."
So, are the Bush administration's troubles in Iraq a boost for Democratic critics of the war such as Clark? Right now it certainly seems so. In last week's debate the Democratic candidates were lining up to denounce what they branded a failed policy. And Bush's somber speech on Iraq Sunday night was all tunnel and no light.
Yet I suspect Iraq will prove to be a trickier topic for the Democrats over the long run. It's easy now, looking in the rear-view mirror, to criticize the administration's errors. But in doing so, the Democrats risk sounding like second-guessers at a time when American troops are still dying in Iraq. And being articulate is no guarantee of public support. Just ask Al Gore.
Bush can answer critics that he went to war believing that it would protect American security and liberate a desperately oppressed people. He had plenty of company in thinking that was the right course -- including me and many other pundits.
The Democrats' larger problem is that Iraq is now their war, too, since they mostly agree it would be disastrous for the United States to cut and run. Their critique of Bush doesn't answer the question of how to exit Iraq in a way that protects U.S. national interests and keeps faith with the Iraqi people.
It is in these delicate areas that Clark may have a special advantage if he decides to run. Indeed, but for the Iraq factor, the politically inexperienced Clark wouldn't merit serious attention.
On the big issue, Clark has the right stuff. He has commanded troops in battle and he won a decisive victory in his war -- the 1999 NATO campaign in Kosovo. He also stuck his neck out in criticizing planning for the Iraq invasion at a time when many Democrats were running for cover.
Clark's critique of the war touches all the now-obvious points: Because it deployed a thin force and couldn't invade through Turkey, the United States "trickled in, especially from the north and west" and didn't take decisive control of Saddam Hussein's strongholds. Worse, it failed to prepare seriously for postwar occupation, bungling what Clark says were obvious tasks:
"Where was the radio network that could have allowed the U.S. to communicate with the Iraqi people? Where were the thousands of Arab Americans ready to translate? Where were the trained Iraqi judges? Where was a new, mobile Iraqi police force that could have kept order? Where were the economic-development programs with contractors ready to go?"
They're all good questions, but that's not what makes Clark an interesting candidate. It's the fact that, like Dwight Eisenhower talking about Korea in 1952, the retired general can argue that he's the man to get America honorably out of a war others created.
A final reason to pay attention to Clark's version of "I told you so" is that it's linked to a broader analysis. He will argue in a book to be published next month that the administration showed "a fundamental misunderstanding of modern war." By rushing into battle, it lost the biggest advantage of American power, which is "the incredible leverage to bring other allies on board to help us."
Bush's mistake, he argues, was not in overestimating U.S. power but in underestimating it. Rather than alienating allies by crowing about America's new empire, the administration should have understood that "we already have a virtual empire," Clark says. The power of that virtual empire lies in America's inescapable dominance of the global economy and the international organizations that underpin it.
Charles Peters, founder of The Washington Monthly, used to run cheeky advertisements for his neoliberal magazine challenging prospective readers: "If you're not afraid of being right too soon." In a few days, a similar claim of prescience may become a theme of a Clark presidential campaign.
davidignatius@washpost.com
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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