Book: Against All Enemies: Inside America`s War on Terror

Author: Richard A. Clarke
Publisher:

Richard Clarke’s motive for writing this book is stated in its Preface as: From inside the White House, State Department, and the Pentagon for thirty years, I disdained those who departed government and quickly rushed out to write about it. It seemed somehow inappropriate to expose, as Bismarck put it, ‘the making of the sausage’. Yet I became aware after my departure from federal service that much that I thought was well known was actually obscure to many who wanted to know.”

And he was in a uniquely well-informed position to spill the beans. He became the nation’s crisis manager on September 11, 2001, when he called the shots from the West Wing Video Conferencing Center at the White House, which according to the formal protocol should have been done by the President’s National Security Adviser and Clarke’s boss, Condoleeza Rice. But she instead let him be at the helms. He was the one who emptied the national air space of all the commercial air planes, got the order from the president to shoot down any hostile air plane (including those which had been hijacked), had the White House evacuated, diverted President Bush to a safe haven, etc.

He got the name of the book from the ‘ancient pledge’ as described in the Epilogue: “to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, Against All Enemies.”

In the first chapter of the book “Evacuate the White House”, he described the tragic events of 9/11 and how he handled the aftermath and managed the crisis by coordinating the various departments and agencies through video conferencing. He also discussed the immediate reaction of the administration’s top brass including the president ‘to kick some ass’. He then described how rapidly the shock wore off and the top executives returned to their individual ideologies and personal policies. For instance, Clarke discussed his impressions: “Then I realized that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to protect their agenda about Iraq. Since the beginning of the administration, indeed well before, they had been pressing for a war with Iraq. My friends in the Pentagon had been telling me that the word was we would be invading Iraq sometime in 2002…”

And about President Bush: “Later, on the evening of the 12th, I left the Video Conferencing Center and there, wandering alone around the Situation Room, was the president. He looked like he wanted something to do. He grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room. Look, he told us, I know you have a lot to do and all… but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he’s linked.”

The justification for invading Iraq was due to the following five reasons “attributed to three senior advisers (Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz) and to President Bush:
•To clean up the mess left by the first Bush administration when, in 1991, it let Saddam Hussein consolidate power and slaughter opponents after the first U.S. – Iraq war;
•To improve Israel’s strategic position by eliminating a large hostile military;
•To create an Arab democracy that could serve as a model to other friendly Arab states now threatened with internal dissent, notably Egypt and Saudi Arabia;
•To permit withdrawal of U.S. forces from Saudi Arabia (after twelve years), where they were stationed to counter the Iraqi military and were a source of anti-Americanism threatening to the regime;
•To create another friendly source of oil for the U.S. market and reduce dependency upon oil from Saudi Arabia, which might suffer overthrow someday.”

While all these reasons may be plausible from the perspective of a broad foreign policy, they do not mention, even en passant, the weapons of mass destruction which Iraq was supposed to have nor is there any Iraq – al-Qaeda link, direct or meandering, which became the nexus of President Bush’s thrust to attack Iraq.

Regarding President Bush’s objective of establishing a democratic government in Iraq, Clarke commented, “Indeed, because the U.S. apparently believes in imposing its ideology through the violence of war, many in the Arab world wonder how the United States can criticize the fundamentalists who also seek to impose their ideology through violence.”

Clarke has described at length how he, the CIA, FBI, and others persistently stressed the urgency of strategic planning to frustrate the al-Qaeda threats against U.S, inside and abroad, and how the administration kept on putting these pressing issues on the backburner. He pointed out repeatedly administration’s indifference to the increasing threats of terrorism and al-Qaeda before 9/11 and in the end getting fed up and frustrated, he decided to relinquish his charge of the Counter-terrorism Security Group (CSG) and opted for the job of the cyber security, a newly created government organ.

He said to his boss, Dr. Rice, “you obviously do not think that terrorism is as important as I do since you are taking months to do anything: so get somebody else to do it who can be happy working at it at your pace. We agreed that I would start the new critical infrastructure and cyber job at the beginning of the new fiscal year, October 1.”

His two or three successors also left in dismay and despair on administration’s foot-dragging and inaction to do anything effective for stemming the tide of terrorism and instead focusing and diverting valuable resources to the planned war against Iraq. First, the retired four-star Army general Wayne Downing and then Randy Beers. Venting his frustration in conversation with Clarke, Beers said, “They still don’t get it. Insteada goin’ all out against al-Qaeda and eliminating our vulnerabilities at home, they wanna fuckin’ invade Iraq again.”

The book is not all al-Qaeda and Iraq; it’s about Clarke’s long experience and observations of working in the administrations of the last four presidents. But the political shock waves that it has created in the current affairs is because of its criticism of the sitting president, George W. Bush, and his administration for starting and getting hopelessly entangled in the Iraq war, which has caused diversion of valuable resources for fighting al-Qaeda and terrorism, into Iraq.

These accusations are instrumental for the White House to reverse its decision of not allowing Dr. Rice to testify publicly and under oath in front of the 0/11 Commission. Dr. Rice testified on April 4, 2004. The White House has also declassified the August 6 memo which contained the cautionary warnings of the anticipated terrorist attacks.

How the scenario that the book has helped to unravel will eventually play out and how it will impact President Bush’s reelection bid remains to be seen. Only the events over the next two or three months will throw some light on it.

The book is published by Free Press, a Division of Simons & Schuster, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, in March 2004. The book has eleven chapters and 304 pages cover to cover. A brief biographical sketch of Richard Clarke from the dust jacket is as follows:

Richard Clarke was appointed by President Clinton as the first National Coordinator for Security Infrastructure Protection and Counterterrorism in May 1998 and continued in that position under George W. Bush. Until March 2003 he was a career member of the Senior Executive Service, having begun his federal service in 1973 in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, as an analyst on nuclear weapons and European security issues. In the Reagan administration, Mr. Clarke was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for intelligence. In the first Bush administration, he was the Assistant Secretary of State for Politico-Military affairs.

The book is written in a lucid, readable, and easy style.