Open letter to Andrew Sullivan

This is what I'm responding to. You opine that Clark is toast (probably because you’re parroting what Sean Hannity and virtues guru/serial gambler Bill Bennett had to say about the Clark/Moore issue. You say Clark gave up an opportunity to condemn Moore. Why should he? It’s an undisputed fact that Bush was unaccounted for during his last, required, year of Guard service. Bush has never produced convincing evidence to dispute the accusation that he was AWOL during that period of time. So, Moore used “deserter” instead of “AWOL”. Semantics. Besides, Clark is running in the Democratic primary. Not the Republican primary. So, the opinions of Sean Hannity and Bill Bennett (and Andrew Sullivan, for that matter) are somewhat irrelevant. Clark gave a fantastic answer to the London Times article question he got from Brit Hume (who apparently didn’t hear the previous question about Clark’s democratic bona fides). Clark didn’t want to impugn the President’s policies in a foreign publication. Clark was genuinely jubilant that the soldiers (with whom he had been a comrade for 34 years of his life) had won a decisive military victory. (I don’t find it hypocritical or disingenuous to oppose the decision to go to war, but celebrate its swift victorious outcome. In fact, many ordinary people share that opinion). He congratulated the soldiers, and their leaders for that victory, and set out several roadblocks that he saw ahead. He was right about those roadblocks, and the Pentagon thought they didn’t exist. That’s why a year later, Iraq is still largely chaotic, and over 500 servicepeople have been killed (more than during the war itself). You call Clark’s response “vacuous”. What’s so vacuous about this: No, that's not true. In fact, if you look at the whole article, what you'll see is that the article lays out a whole series of tasks that have to be done later on. And it's written in a foreign publication. I'm not going to take U.S. policy and my differences with the administration directly into a foreign publication. But I made it clear in the article -- and I think you've got it there. If you read it on down, you'll see that I say this doesn't mean -- they've got to focus now on the peacekeeping, the occupation, the provision of order. There's a whole series of tasks that I laid out for them to do that, in fact, they were incapable of doing. I did not support this war. I would not have voted for the resolution. But once American soldiers are on the battlefield, then I want them to be successful and I want them to come home safely. So, if Clark finishes second in NH, and SC, and his campaign has some legs, will you nominate yourself for the “Von Hoffman Award?” Sincerely, Alan