Thursday, March 25, 2004
The real message of the Clarke revelations
Most people I've read on the web consider Clarke's book and testimony "devastating", "damaging", and a "KO" to Bush. They also note that the general message isn't news; we always knew Bush wasn't really that effective on terrorism. The administration itself hasn't come back with much of a rebuttal, and essentially no evidence to counter Clarke's. But some people don't seem to get the relevance of what the Bush admin was doing before 9/11 (since they "probably couldn't have prevented the attacks"), or after the war in Afghanistan (since they were just going after "more terrorists" in Iraq). But the main implication of Clarke's testimony is that Bush & co have never committed to fight al-Qaeda but instead folded the al-Qaeda threat into their pre-existing policy priorities.
Think of three phases of the Bush administration. According to Clarke, before 9/11, the Bush people didn't take al-Qaeda seriously enough to dedicate high level attention to it. Instead, they wanted a "comprehensive" strategy for terrorism and related issues (even the Afghan opium trade), and were willing to put off dealing with al-Qaeda until it was ready. Saletan (in an excellent column) quotes the 9/11 hearings:
This quote is particularly revealing: if al-Qaeda or even the bundled terrorism issue really mattered to the admin, if it were really seen as urgent, they would have made time. But instead, they focused on the agenda they brought into the White House, especially missile defense against a non-existent ballistic missile threat and bringing down the regime of Saddam Hussein.
Would a different course---for example, that followed by Clinton, and presumably by a hypothetical Gore admin--have prevented 9/11? Probably not, but who knows? As Saletan points out, the attacks wouldn't have been stopped by the right plan, but by the right process: the different agencies talking to each other, sharing info, and "shaking the tree" for intelligence. If the cabinet made al-Qaeda a high priority, maybe the FBI would have shuffled up info about suspicious flight students; maybe they would have called up Marwan. Or maybe not. But it's clear in hindsight the Bush people didn't get it before 9/11.
But then, a lot of us didn't. So what did they learn after 9/11? According to Clarke, appallingly little. Bush, Rumsfield, and Wolfowitz first instinct was to explot 9/11 to push a prior policy priority, invading Iraq. (This is the same trick they used on the domestic side to push tax cuts when the economy went south.) According to Clarke, they had to be shouted into focusing on al-Qaeda and Afghanistan. I have no doubt a Gore admin would have gone after al-Qaeda immediately; Gore himself immediately decided it was an al-Qaeda attack on hearing the news.
A week after 9/11, Bush promised to go after the perpetrators of 9/11 and destroy their organization. Acknowledging al-Qaeda lurked in many countries, the administration vowed to keep them on the run, never letting them pause to breathe or plan another attack. The world was ready to support this mission, or at least stand back.
The real lesson of Clarke's testimony comes through in phase 3, after the fall of the Taliban, because the Bush administration did not follow through on its promises. With al-Qaeda damaged, on the run, but not destroyed, they pulled back resources to focus on Iraq (and, for that matter, missile defense, now a huge budget priority). They still didn't understand the real nature of the terrorist threat, preferring to focus on an old enemy with a well-known address. And they allowed al-Qaeda to regroup. As the attack on Spain shows, they haven't given up or changed, and our clumsy, inappropriate foreign policy has exposed us to attacks on our troops and civilians in Iraq, and have aided the recruitment drives of al-Qaeda and similar groups.
Has invading Iraq aided the war on terror or hindered it? I think the answer is obvious. If nothing else, it has stretched our forces to the limit, and precluded a really thorough purge of al-Qaeda from Afghanistan and other places (but this wasn't the Bush priority). Beyond that, it created a new front where there wasn't one: Iraq wasn't working with the terrorists, wasn't hiding significant terrorist groups, and didn't have any WMD to give to terrorists (plus there was excellent reason to doubt Iraq would ever give them WMD if they had them). The invasion itself furthers the crusader image of America bin Laden uses to recruit followers (a truly international effort would have avoided this, but Bush couldn't be bothered). And the Bushies made little effort to plan for the rebuilding of Iraq and its transformation to a democracy, so claims that this is a long run strategy to de-radicalize the Middle East pie-in-the-sky. The plan was to invade, consequences be damned.
Bush doesn't get it. We're not fighting states, or a tactic ("terrorism" itself), or "evil" (though our enemies may be). We're fighting groups that want to do as much damage to the US and allies as possible. We had a chance to smash the biggest group, but Bush and Cheney had other priorities.
And now they have the audacity to run as the candidates best able to fight terror. And dare to insult the opposition as soft on terror. Clarke has had such an impact because he was the first insider to show the reverse is true.
Think of three phases of the Bush administration. According to Clarke, before 9/11, the Bush people didn't take al-Qaeda seriously enough to dedicate high level attention to it. Instead, they wanted a "comprehensive" strategy for terrorism and related issues (even the Afghan opium trade), and were willing to put off dealing with al-Qaeda until it was ready. Saletan (in an excellent column) quotes the 9/11 hearings:
Roemer: So does this slow the process down to go to the deputies rather than to the principals or a small group as you had previously done?
Clarke: It slowed it down enormously, by months. … When the deputies committee did meet, it took the issue of al-Qaida as part of a cluster of policy issues, including nuclear proliferation in South Asia, democratization in Pakistan, how to treat the various problems, including narcotics and other problems in Afghanistan, and launched on a series of deputies meetings extending over several months to address al-Qaida in the context of all of those interrelated issues. … So we were ready for a principals meeting in July. But the principals' calendar was full, and then they went on vacation, many of them, in August. So we couldn't meet in August, and therefore the principals met in September.
This quote is particularly revealing: if al-Qaeda or even the bundled terrorism issue really mattered to the admin, if it were really seen as urgent, they would have made time. But instead, they focused on the agenda they brought into the White House, especially missile defense against a non-existent ballistic missile threat and bringing down the regime of Saddam Hussein.
Would a different course---for example, that followed by Clinton, and presumably by a hypothetical Gore admin--have prevented 9/11? Probably not, but who knows? As Saletan points out, the attacks wouldn't have been stopped by the right plan, but by the right process: the different agencies talking to each other, sharing info, and "shaking the tree" for intelligence. If the cabinet made al-Qaeda a high priority, maybe the FBI would have shuffled up info about suspicious flight students; maybe they would have called up Marwan. Or maybe not. But it's clear in hindsight the Bush people didn't get it before 9/11.
But then, a lot of us didn't. So what did they learn after 9/11? According to Clarke, appallingly little. Bush, Rumsfield, and Wolfowitz first instinct was to explot 9/11 to push a prior policy priority, invading Iraq. (This is the same trick they used on the domestic side to push tax cuts when the economy went south.) According to Clarke, they had to be shouted into focusing on al-Qaeda and Afghanistan. I have no doubt a Gore admin would have gone after al-Qaeda immediately; Gore himself immediately decided it was an al-Qaeda attack on hearing the news.
A week after 9/11, Bush promised to go after the perpetrators of 9/11 and destroy their organization. Acknowledging al-Qaeda lurked in many countries, the administration vowed to keep them on the run, never letting them pause to breathe or plan another attack. The world was ready to support this mission, or at least stand back.
The real lesson of Clarke's testimony comes through in phase 3, after the fall of the Taliban, because the Bush administration did not follow through on its promises. With al-Qaeda damaged, on the run, but not destroyed, they pulled back resources to focus on Iraq (and, for that matter, missile defense, now a huge budget priority). They still didn't understand the real nature of the terrorist threat, preferring to focus on an old enemy with a well-known address. And they allowed al-Qaeda to regroup. As the attack on Spain shows, they haven't given up or changed, and our clumsy, inappropriate foreign policy has exposed us to attacks on our troops and civilians in Iraq, and have aided the recruitment drives of al-Qaeda and similar groups.
Has invading Iraq aided the war on terror or hindered it? I think the answer is obvious. If nothing else, it has stretched our forces to the limit, and precluded a really thorough purge of al-Qaeda from Afghanistan and other places (but this wasn't the Bush priority). Beyond that, it created a new front where there wasn't one: Iraq wasn't working with the terrorists, wasn't hiding significant terrorist groups, and didn't have any WMD to give to terrorists (plus there was excellent reason to doubt Iraq would ever give them WMD if they had them). The invasion itself furthers the crusader image of America bin Laden uses to recruit followers (a truly international effort would have avoided this, but Bush couldn't be bothered). And the Bushies made little effort to plan for the rebuilding of Iraq and its transformation to a democracy, so claims that this is a long run strategy to de-radicalize the Middle East pie-in-the-sky. The plan was to invade, consequences be damned.
Bush doesn't get it. We're not fighting states, or a tactic ("terrorism" itself), or "evil" (though our enemies may be). We're fighting groups that want to do as much damage to the US and allies as possible. We had a chance to smash the biggest group, but Bush and Cheney had other priorities.
And now they have the audacity to run as the candidates best able to fight terror. And dare to insult the opposition as soft on terror. Clarke has had such an impact because he was the first insider to show the reverse is true.
