The testimony of Richard Clarke has put the spotlight on Bushs ineffectual and even counterprodutive counterterrorism strategy and they have been trying to tear him with with all the dirty tricks they are accustomed to using against substantial critics. He must have known they would come after him harder than theyve gone after Bin Laden. But again, as with other instances where real media attention starts getting paid, the truth is so obvious that the more spotlight on it the better. Bushs credibility has never been able to withstand the harsh light of truth and the more they spin the larger the holes will appear.
It has long amazed me that the Bush administration sells itself as strong on terror when its 9/11 response has been criminally inept. Bush sells himself as a strong leader but not only did he run scared on 9/11 (remember Air Force one) but his slogan based policies since have been unbelieveably counterproductive.
Clarke has made two major accusations. So far the media has focused on what Bush knew and did before September 11th but thats not the real crime here. The real crime was his obsession with invading Iraq and how counterproductive a response that was.
Its like they werent really serious about stopping Al Qaeda and defusing radical islam. Their pre-tmptve invasion of Iraq has inflamed it. Invading Afghanistan was a nobrainer, but combating radical Islam requires nuance and ideological sophistication. Bush wouldnt know a nuance if it stepped on him. Far as Im concerned they still not taking terrorism seriously. These are some serious times and we need some serious folk up in there. I fear we are going to lose this 'war' if we dont get this bunch of homegrown fundamentalists out of there.
But hey, I will let Clarke speak for himself, he says it with more authority than I ever could. This is an excerpt from his book, Against All Enemies:
"From the interactions I did have with Bush it was clear that the critique of him as a dumb, lazy rich kid were somewhat off the mark. When he focused, he asked the kind of questions that revealed a results-oriented mind, but he looked for the simple solution, the bumper sticker description of the problem. Once he had that, he could put energy behind a drive to achieve his goal.
"The problem was that many of the important issues, like terrorism, like Iraq, were laced with important subtlety and nuance. These issues needed analysis and Bush and his inner circle had no real interest in complicated analyses; on the issues that they cared about, they already knew the answers, it was received wisdom. . . .
"Many times since Sept. 11 I have wondered what difference it made that George Bush was president when we were attacked. What if it had happened with Clinton still in office or what if the Florida voting procedures had been otherwise?
"Although Bush had heard about Al-Qaida in intelligence reports before the attack he had spent little time learning about the sources and nature of the movement. His immediate instinct after the attacks was, naturally, to hit back. His framework, however, was summed up by his famous line ``you are either with us or against us'' and his early focus on dealing with Iraq as a way of demonstrating America's power. I doubt that anyone ever had the chance to make the case to him that attacking Iraq would actually make America less secure and strengthen the broader radical Islamic terrorist movement. Certainly he did not hear that from the small circle of advisers who alone are the people whose views he respects and trusts.
"Any leader whom one can imagine as president on Sept. 11 would have declared a ``war on terrorism'' and would have ended the Afghan sanctuary by invading. Almost any president would have stepped up domestic security and preparedness measures. Exactly what did George Bush do after Sept. 11 that any other president one can imagine wouldn't have done after such attacks?
"In the end, what was unique about George Bush's reaction to terrorism was his selection as an object lesson for potential state sponsors of terrorism, not a country that had been engaging in anti-U.S. terrorism but one that had not been, Iraq. It is hard to imagine another president making that choice.
"Others (Clinton, the first Bush, Carter, Ford) might have tried to understand the phenomenon of terrorism, what led 15 Saudis and four others to commit suicide to kill Americans. Others might have tried to build a world consensus to address the root causes, while using the moment to force what had been lethargic or doubting governments to arrest known terrorists and close front organizations. One can imagine Clinton trying one more time to force an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, going to Saudi Arabia and addressing the Muslim people in a moving appeal for religious tolerance, pushing hard for a security arrangement between India and Pakistan to create a nuclear-free zone, and stabilizing Pakistan.
"Such efforts may or may not have succeeded, but one thing we know they would not have done is inflame Islamic opinion and further radicalize Muslim youth into heightened hatred of America in the way that invading Iraq has done. . . .
"One would have thought that it was equally obvious after Sept. 11 that high on the priority list would have been improving U.S. relations with the Islamic world, in order to dry up support for the deviant variant of Islam that is Al-Qaida. After all, Al-Qaida, the enemy that attacked us, was engaged in its own highly successful propaganda campaign to influence millions of Muslims to act against America, as a first step in a campaign to replace existing governments around the world with Taliban-like regimes. To defeat that enemy . . . we needed to do more than just arrest and kill people. We and our values needed to be more appealing to Muslims than Al-Qaida is.
"By all measures, however, Al-Qaida and similar groups were increasing in support from Morocco to Indonesia. If that trend continues, the radical imams and their madrasah schools will (as Donald Rumsfeld finally understood in 2003, as reflected in his leaked internal memo that painted a far more bleak assessment of the war on terrorism than his public statements) produce more terrorists than we jail or shoot. Far from addressing the popular appeal of the enemy that attacked us, Bush handed that enemy precisely what it wanted and needed, proof that America was at war with Islam, that we were the new crusaders come to occupy Muslim land.
"Nothing America could have done would have provided Al-Qaida and its new generation of cloned groups a better recruitment device than our unprovoked invasion of an oil-rich Arab country. Nothing else could have so well negated all our other positive acts and so closed Muslim eyes and ears to our subsequent calls for reform in their region. It was as if Osama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting, ``Invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq.''
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