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March 26, 2004
Clarke
One of the shitty parts about working at a bookstore is that while one is constantly surrounded by books, one is also told over and over again not to read them while on the clock. Over the last 3 days I have consciously ignored this fact and took a look at Richard Clarke's new book...
I'm only about 200 pages into it (I have to actually work, unfortunately.) But I do have some off hand comments:
Clinton seems to have written the rules about how to fight Terror. It wasn't on anyone's list of problems when he took office. A large section of Clarke's book deals with how Clinton-era policy evolved. It wasn't simply a matter of Clinton being convinced: there was one memorable scene where Clarke asks for a whole bunch of departments to be given anti-terror budgets (this was back in the day before Homeland security put all those budgets into one pot). He is told that even if he got the funding past congress, the agencies themselves would not necessarily care enough about Terror to spend the money there. So he had to convince the directors of all these groups (HUD, FAA, etc) that the problem was real. And then he had to get them to figure out ways to co-operate...
Everyone reading this book is commenting on how bad Clarke makes Bush look against terror. I haven't really gotten to that part yet. But it seems so far that the main obstacle to fighting terror was the Pentagon. Clarke describes a few cases where they wanted a job done, and the CIA was unable to do it. So they would go to the Pentagon who told the White House that they wouldn't do it. Then (and this is maddening) the Pentagon told the Special forces guys that Clinton said they couldn't do it. If this is actually true, A whole hell of a lot of Military heads need to roll. Without quoting the book (which I can't do as it isn't in front of me), I can't properly convey how outrageous this conduct is. But it sure as hell looks like (from reading Clarke) the Pentagon stopped us from getting top Al-Q leaders more than once. And then sold out the Commander in Chief...
When Bush took over it looks like there were two main camps: those obsessive about Al-Q and those who obsessed about Iraq. The Al-Q guys seem to have been Clinton hold-overers. Iraq guys seem to have won. The Iraq guys seem to pin most of bin Laden's stuff on Saddam...
Posted by Andrew at March 26, 2004 02:57 AM
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Comments
Probably the most insightful comment I've seen on Clarke is the one which notes that as a career civil servant with a specific area of expertise, he tends to see the world in the narrow terms of his own area, and to resent the "big vision" people -- i.e. the elected and appointed officials -- whose job is to look at multiple issues from multiple angles and formulate a broad overall strategy.
Clarke has also, either thoughtlessly or on purpose, created a problem that every administration from now on is going to have to face. No career civil servant who directly served the White House (any White House) has written a book about the internal goings-on and debates within an administration while that administration was still in office. Now, ever President and cabinet member is going to find himself wondering if the people who work for him are going to stab him in the back or try to make him look bad. Underlings become potential enemies. This is, quite seriously, not a good thing.
Posted by: Dean Esmay at March 26, 2004 05:06 AM
Yes and no. While I can't think of a recent example, I seem to recall that one of Lincoln's former generals (McClellan) ran for president against him. The basis of his Campaign was that Lincoln wasn't trying hard enough to win the war...
The analogy breaks down there, though. Historians are pretty much unanimous that it was McClellan who wasn't trying hard enough to win...
Also, Clarke's book works well just on the level of "The history of American Anti-Terror efforts" or some such. I haven't even gotten to the Bush bits yet, but the Clinton ones are fascinating...
Posted by: Andrew Cory at March 26, 2004 12:37 PM
Well...
I could add a few others to the stack of backstabbing, insubordinate Presidential subordinates:
MacArthur towards Truman
Stanton towards Johnson
John C. Calhoun towards Jackson
Burr towards Jefferson
Jefferson towards Washington (That's what I said.)
In every case, the country was in a bout of political turbulence or out and out war.
We've got both, interesting times indeed.
I'm not particularly worried about Clarke setting a bad precedent. That (expletive deleted) (hypthesized description of individual's paternity) Bush has already shot so many holes in the dignity of government, the presidency, and the country in general that it will take decades to fix.
I'm surprised MoveOn.org hasn't come up with "Declaration of Independance" commercial outlining the various outrages of Good King George.
Posted by: John Foelster at March 26, 2004 08:09 PM