Then there is Clark's personality, which turned off many of his Army colleagues who considered him arrogant and self-involved. Reviewing Clark's memoir in the online magazine Slate, Deborah Dickerson notes its "feigned artlessness, self-congratulation, stolen credit, wild contortions of ass-covering, and Amen-corner banalities tossed off like gems of Talmudic brilliance."
Most importantly, Clark's foreign-policy thinking is bunk. He is a former general who mindlessly wants to fight his last war. He has criticized Bush for losing international support by not fighting the war in Afghanistan through NATO and not indicting Osama bin Laden as a war criminal - presumably because we fought Kosovo through NATO and indicted Milosevic. But no one has seriously questioned the legitimacy of the Afghan war or our pursuit of the unindicted bin Laden.
Clark, like other Democrats, has scored Bush for not working through the United Nations in the Iraq war. But sometimes the United Nations just isn't willing to go along, and the United States must act anyway. Clark should know. When it seemed the U.N. Security Council wouldn't endorse the Kosovo war because of Russia's opposition, the Clinton administration bypassed the United Nations.
Clark apparently has a selective memory. And that happens to be the one quality that the Democratic field - with several candidates running away from their pro-war, pro-USA Patriot Act votes - already has in ample supply.