COVER STORY
President Bill Clinton set into motion a military intervention after the Haitian government refused to restore democratic rule. Edwards’ division was called up. “We were loaded and ready,” he says. “The doors were closed and we started moving. We had already donned our parachutes.” Unbeknownst to Edwards, Clinton also had sent a delegation, which included former President Jimmy Carter, to Haiti to negotiate a surrender of the government. At that moment, most of America’s ready military fleet was told to stand down. “They turned us around and sent us back,” says Edwards, now 46. “I ended up being a peacetime soldier. And look, I was not one of those people who felt like their life would not be complete if they did not engage in combat. I am not going to tell you I was disappointed, because that was not going to happen without a tremendous loss of life — not on our side, on their side.”
Edwards says he knew what his job was when he boarded the plane. “I believe in fighting when necessary,” he says. “It should always be a last resort, and in this case it was.” While he initially expected to pull a 20-year hitch in the Army, Edwards became a civilian just two years later. “My oldest child, Samantha, was born with spina bifida, and she had several brain surgeries over her first few years — and I was always gone, long deployments, training, and my wife had to tend to that by herself,” he says. “I got to feeling like that was unfair to her and that the family would be better off if we came home. Also, at the time, the Cold War was over and the Army was getting smaller. They were asking people to leave and get out of the Army if they were not absolutely sure they were staying in it for a career.” From that point on, Edwards’ new career became the law and politics, with larger ambitions just beyond the horizon.
Gambit > bestofneworleans.com > maY 7 > 2013
Louisiana Democratic Party Chairwoman Karen Carter Peterson says John Bel Edwards’ ‘American values’ are attractive to voters of all parties, but she also says he likely won’t be the only Democrat in the gubernatorial race.
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