Against All Enemies Read Online Free
Author: Richard A. Clarke
advocates of the Patriot Act as fascists.
We all want to defeat the jihadists. To do that, we need to encourage an active, critical and analytical debate in America about how that will best be done. And if there is another major terrorist attack in this country, we must not panic or stifle debate as we did for too long after 9/11.
We must also insist that we find a better strategy to fight what Condoleezza Rice has suggested will be a âgeneration-longâ conflict. For each day, while we go about our lives much as we always have, it is likely that a jihadist is planning another beheading in Saudi Arabia, a Taliban is firing a mortar at a U.S. base in Afghanistan, an Iraqi is setting a bomb by the side of a road a U.S. convoy will travel, and they are teaching âDeath to Americansâ in allegedly religious facilities and training camps in places like the Philippines and Yemen, Lebanon and London, and in the United States itself, in our prisons and storefronts in Queens, Jersey City, northern Virginia, and Florida. They have learned how to hate and they have learned how to killâ¦and they continue to do both.
Preface
F ROM INSIDE THE W HITE H OUSE, the 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, âthe making of sausage.â 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.
I was frequently asked âexactly how did things work on 9/11, what happened?â In looking at the available material, I found that there was no good source, no retelling of that day which history will long mark as a pivot point. Then, as I began to think about teaching graduate students at Georgetown and Harvard, I realized that there was no single inside account of the flow of recent history that had brought us to September 11, 2001, and the events that followed from it.
As the events of 2003 played out in Iraq and elsewhere, I grew increasingly concerned that too many of my fellow citizens were being misled. The vast majority of Americans believed, because the Bush administration had implied it, that Saddam Hussein had something to do with the al Qaeda attacks on America. Many thought that the Bush administration was doing a good job of fighting terrorism when, actually, the administration had squandered the opportunity to eliminate al Qaeda and instead strengthened our enemies by going off on a completely unnecessary tangent, the invasion of Iraq. A new al Qaeda has emerged and is growing stronger, in part because of our own actions and inactions. It is in many ways a tougher opponent than the original threat we faced before September 11 and we are not doing what is necessary to make America safer from that threat.
This is the story, from my perspective, of how al Qaeda developed and attacked the United States on September 11. It is a story of the CIA and FBI, who came late to realize that there was a threat to the United States and who were unable to stop it even after they agreed that the threat was real and significant. It is also the story of four presidents:
Ronald Reagan, who did not retaliate for the murder of 278 United States Marines in Beirut and who violated his own terrorism policy by trading arms for hostages in what came to be called the Iran-Contra scandal;
George H. W. Bush, who did not retaliate for the Libyan murder of 259 passengers on Pan Am 103; who did not have an official counterterrorism policy; and who left Saddam Hussein in place, requiring the United States to leave a large military presence in Saudi Arabia;
Bill Clinton, who identified terrorism as the major postâCold War threat and acted to improve our counterterrorism capabilities; who (little known to the public) quelled anti-American terrorism by Iraq and Iran and defeated an al Qaeda
We all want to defeat the jihadists. To do that, we need to encourage an active, critical and analytical debate in America about how that will best be done. And if there is another major terrorist attack in this country, we must not panic or stifle debate as we did for too long after 9/11.
We must also insist that we find a better strategy to fight what Condoleezza Rice has suggested will be a âgeneration-longâ conflict. For each day, while we go about our lives much as we always have, it is likely that a jihadist is planning another beheading in Saudi Arabia, a Taliban is firing a mortar at a U.S. base in Afghanistan, an Iraqi is setting a bomb by the side of a road a U.S. convoy will travel, and they are teaching âDeath to Americansâ in allegedly religious facilities and training camps in places like the Philippines and Yemen, Lebanon and London, and in the United States itself, in our prisons and storefronts in Queens, Jersey City, northern Virginia, and Florida. They have learned how to hate and they have learned how to killâ¦and they continue to do both.
Preface
F ROM INSIDE THE W HITE H OUSE, the 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, âthe making of sausage.â 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.
I was frequently asked âexactly how did things work on 9/11, what happened?â In looking at the available material, I found that there was no good source, no retelling of that day which history will long mark as a pivot point. Then, as I began to think about teaching graduate students at Georgetown and Harvard, I realized that there was no single inside account of the flow of recent history that had brought us to September 11, 2001, and the events that followed from it.
As the events of 2003 played out in Iraq and elsewhere, I grew increasingly concerned that too many of my fellow citizens were being misled. The vast majority of Americans believed, because the Bush administration had implied it, that Saddam Hussein had something to do with the al Qaeda attacks on America. Many thought that the Bush administration was doing a good job of fighting terrorism when, actually, the administration had squandered the opportunity to eliminate al Qaeda and instead strengthened our enemies by going off on a completely unnecessary tangent, the invasion of Iraq. A new al Qaeda has emerged and is growing stronger, in part because of our own actions and inactions. It is in many ways a tougher opponent than the original threat we faced before September 11 and we are not doing what is necessary to make America safer from that threat.
This is the story, from my perspective, of how al Qaeda developed and attacked the United States on September 11. It is a story of the CIA and FBI, who came late to realize that there was a threat to the United States and who were unable to stop it even after they agreed that the threat was real and significant. It is also the story of four presidents:
Ronald Reagan, who did not retaliate for the murder of 278 United States Marines in Beirut and who violated his own terrorism policy by trading arms for hostages in what came to be called the Iran-Contra scandal;
George H. W. Bush, who did not retaliate for the Libyan murder of 259 passengers on Pan Am 103; who did not have an official counterterrorism policy; and who left Saddam Hussein in place, requiring the United States to leave a large military presence in Saudi Arabia;
Bill Clinton, who identified terrorism as the major postâCold War threat and acted to improve our counterterrorism capabilities; who (little known to the public) quelled anti-American terrorism by Iraq and Iran and defeated an al Qaeda
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