Centerfield

I heard an Administration official attack this Clarke fellow by saying it was sour grapes of someone who did not get a promotion.

But he did not deny the facts.

I can see where both points may be equally valid. It wouldn't surprise me that GW wanted to get Saddam on some purely personal level. I actually was originally against going into Iraq and on that I can understand Kerry's point of view, regardless of what the current situation may be and our need to finish what we've started.

On the other hand, it also wouldn't surprise me in the least if Clarke wasn't doing the interview partly out of sour grapes whether the conversations happened or not.

I think the "sour grapes" accusations are interesting, considering that the presumed insult wasn't the denial of a promotion, but the downgrading of his position from a Cabinet level office. In other words, Bush downgraded the counterterrorism post from a Cabinet-level position, then accused the holder of that post of bias in saying Bush didn't take terrorism seriously enough. This is bad all around for the administration.

Looking at Josh Marshall, I think one of the most important points is Clarke's statemtent that the Bush administration was stuck in a cold war mentality and refused to be shaken out of it despite the evidence. Even 9/11, which was supposed to have "changed everything," only became a reason to pursue the same path. As Marshall says, "The Bush war cabinet set about using 9/11 -- exploiting it, really -- to advance an agenda which had, in fact, been largely discredited by 9/11."

I thought from the beginning that the Bush admin had strong and focused antipathy towards Iraq, and only some of this had to do with 9/11 and terrorism. And I think this definitely had something to do with choosing Iraq as 2nd on the hit list, and with moving very quickly.

But that's not at all to say that Iraq (and Hussein) didn't deserve this antipathy. I think reasonable people can differ over the logic of carrying forward the war on terror by invading Iraq. Let's face it, antipathy was there, it was part of the equation, but it just doesn't necessarily follow that therefore there was no sense in targeting Hussein/Iraq, who after all had defied the US _AND_ the UN for over a decade, and whose vicious cruelty to his people was well known. There was never any good reason to think this leopard was going to change his spots.

The part that I object to in this Clarke dust-up is the implication that the Bush admin dropped the ball. Yeah, hindsight clearly shows us all NOW that Clarke was prescient, a voice in the wilderness that understood the threat. But this doesn't change the fact that there was really ZERO political will on the part of the populace to confront terrorism aggressively prior to 9/11. Which includes not just Bush's 8 months in office, but Clinton's 8 years, and so on.

Just for sh!ts and giggles, let's suppose that the admin had listened to Clarke and taken al quaeda dead serious as top priority. Suppose starting on 1/21/01 Bush had proposed very heightened airport security and the patriot act. And invading Afghanistan to depose the Taliban. Leaving aside the very high likelihood that Congress would have looked at him like he had 3 heads, let's suppose these proposals had somehow been enacted and 9/11 averted.

Who'd be talking now about Bush and his imaginary terrorist boogeymen?

The US government's policies are driven by the political opinions of its populace much moreso than Americans care to recognize. It's why our government specializes in post-horse-escape legislation regarding barn doors.

If 9/11 hadn't happened, most Americans would still not give a crap about the threat of terrorism. So I see nothing to be gaining itno poring over the minutae of pre-9/11 policies. It's pontless.

bk,

You make a good point in suggesting that the terrorist threat is only fully appreciated in hindsight. I think you're absolutely right that, had 9/11 been averted, no one would appreciate the efforts that would have gone into keeping terrorism at bay.

But to call Clarke a lone voice about the threat of terrorism prior to 9/11 is ignoring the facts. After the bombing of the Cole, it seemed that Clinton finally started to "get it" regarding the unique threat that terrorism posed and began to act accordingly. Clarke may have been the point man on that effort, but he certainly wasn't alone in his estimation of terrorism as the greatest threat to the nation. And if the Bush administration deliberately ignored the advice of its advisors on terrorism in favor of a targetting of Iraq after the transition, that fact should not be ignored.

Protecting the nation is like housework... it only gets noticed when you fail to do it. But the fact is that Bush did fail to protect this nation, and whether it's fair or not, the American people are going to want someone held accountable.

We are not choosing a president based on his ability to protect us in the past. We are choosing one based on his ability to protect us in the future. So even if you don't see the sense in examining pre-9/11 intelligence to determine what went wrong, some of us would like to learn from our past mistakes to insure they don't happen again. And if that examination shows us that Bush can't be entrusted with protecting this nation, then we damn well better get somebody in there who will.

But even more important than the pre-9/11 policy errors is the reaction post-9/11. According to Clarke, the administration was still intent on targetting Iraq, despite their belief that al Qaeda was to blame. If we can't fault the administration for the foresight to prevent 9/11, we can certainly fault them for their use of it to pursue agendas that were unrelated to 9/11.

I can understand the impulse to disbelieve what Clarke says, but how can you accept what he says but pretend it doesn't matter?

Jeremy, I find it astounding that you characterize Clinton as "beginning to get it about terrorism" and Bush as "not getting it" or else "too obsessed with Iraq to get it." This is from someone who has not yet voted for a republican, bear in mind. I came into all this despising Bush.

Clinton was president for 8 years. If he "got it," he sure didn't show it by his actions. Bush was President for less than 8 MONTHS prior to 9/11. And surely the first couple months had to be devoted to figuring out which switch turned on which light.

You can maintain that Iraq was "unrelated to 9/11." I don't think that really matters, because they're closely related to the effectiveness of our response regardless of Iraq's role (or lack of) in 9/11. The question for me regarding Iraq is this: could we reasonably expect to conduct a policy to deal with terrorism as allowed or even fostered by a variety of rogue foreign governments without dealing with the one country that more than any other directly defied both the US and the UN. And by doing so suggested to terrorists that they could continue to diplomatically diddle us with impunity indefinitely.

Yeah, the WMD rationale appears to have been either a bogus or semi-bogus rationale. But Hussein was still a threat to our desire to make terrorists believe we are dead serious in opposing them, and I'm glad he's gone. Period. No yabbuts about it.

I've seen you maintain on multiple occasions that we are less safe due to the invasion of Iraq, and I am baffled as to how you can so blithely make such a subjective judgment in the absence of any objective criteria.

I thinks sensible people are willing to take it as a story with much to yet to be written. There are ample signs both positive and negative. this suggest to me that things could go either way. Thus I am very uncomfortable with people who are already certain that Bush has done the wrong thing by taking such a hard line and by making Iraq a centerpiece of a policy that includes confronting defiant tinhorns who terrorize their people and traffic in terrorist support, whether it be hosting al quaeda (Taliban) or providing welfare for the relatives of palestinian suicide bombers (Hussein).

bk,

I have to admit that you are absolutely right, and that it is still too soon and the issue is too complex to evaluate now whether, in the long run, the Bush policy on Iraq will have made us safer or not. I am of the opinion that we are not safer in the present primarily because I saw Iraq as a long-term threat and al Qaeda as an immediate threat, and thus see Bush's focus on Iraq in the short term as irresponsible. But I fully acknowledge that Saddam was a threat that would eventually have had to be dealt with.

I maintain, though, that Clinton was far more proactive about fighting terrorism than was Bush. Here is a quote from a Washinton Post article:
"By any measure available, Clinton left office having given greater priority to terrorism than any president before him. His government doubled counterterrorist spending across 40 departments and agencies. The FBI and CIA allocated still larger increases in their budgets and personnel assignments. Clinton devoted some of his highest-profile foreign policy speeches to terrorism, including two at the U.N. General Assembly. An interagency panel, the Counterterrorism Strategy Group, took on new weight in policy disputes from the Justice Department to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And the foreign policy cabinet, by the time it left office, had been convening every two to three weeks to shape a covert and overt campaign against al Qaeda."

Clinton regularly increased funding for counterterrorism, by 13.6% in 1999, 7.1% in 2000 and 22.7% in 2001. At the time, naturally the GOP blasted him for his Democratic free-spending ways in the face of a nonexistent threat. In contrast, Bush downgraded the head of counterterrorism from a Cabinet post and reallocated funding that had been earmarked for counterterrorism efforts. I don't see how you can claim Bush did more than Clinton.

Reading your post, though, I begin to understand why we have such different views on the issue: you seem to believe, as Bush does, that the answer to combatting terrorism is in overturning the foreign governments who sponsor them. This is a distinctly traditional military approach, but one which I don't think is workable against terrorism, as seen in the escape and regrouping of al Qaeda after our invasion of Afghanistan. They weren't there any more, but they were still very much a threat. I believe that terrorism can not be fought in the same way wars against sovereign nations are fought, and that terrorists must by weeded out with the aid of those governments. Only when that does not succeed is it valid to invade and depose the governments. Now, you can argue that Iraq was just such a government, but I think the intelligence community has made it pretty clear that they believe the governments of Syria and Iran (not to mention Saudi Arabia, because we aren't allowed to) have far more intimate ties to dangerous terrorists than Iraq did.

As you mention in your post on the other thread, if Bush had upped the campaign against terrorists and 9/11 had been prevented, his efforts would probably not have been appreciated in retrospect. (I note that you seemed to think the only way he could have prevented it was by invading Afghanistan and deposing the Taliban, reflecting the differences in our preferred approaches) I have to ask you then: how do you know that the increase in the counterterrorism budget overseen by Clinton did not prevent an earlier version of 9/11? Why should we be impressed by Bush's performance when he failed to protect this country on 9/11 and condemn Clinton's performance when no attack of this magnitude happened on his watch?

Oops. Forgot to cite my source. Here's the link to the WaPo article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3616-2001Dec19?language=printer

Jeremy,

It's surely to the Clinton admin's credit that it devoted increasing resources to terrorism over time. My main point was never to disparage whatever efforts the Clinton admin made. But given that it eschewed several opportunities to deal with OBL and 9/11 happened, it doesn't seem especially unfair to suggest that it wasn't made a high enough priority. But let's not dig into that, as, like I said, I'm not much concerned with whatever they did.

The two points I do want to stress are these, and I'm probably repeating myself:

1) how can you really Blame Bush when he was only President for under 8 months? You use a measuring stick for Clinton wherein you can trace a progressive increase in resources devoted to terrorism over an 8-year period. This suggests that the more the admin learned, the more concerned it got. If Clinton is allowed to learn over time and be praised for recognizing the threat of terrorism, why isn't Bush accorded the same opportunity? We'll never know what Bush would have donme over the course of 8 years if 9/11 had no happened. This makes the comparison pretty pointless to me.

2) There was no political will prior to 9/11 from the public to take serious aggressive counterterrorism action. Bush went into office with a stated aversion to nation-building. Clearly, he changed his mind after 9/11. I just don't think it much matters NOW what Bush's pre-9/11 terrorist policies were. Surely his post 9/11 actions are a tacit admission that the aversion to nation-building was a luxurious introversion that we can no longer afford.

If you want someone to stand up and say, Bush's pre 9/11 terrorist and foreign policies were misguided, OK, I'll do it. I thought this WAY prior to 9/11, but then I'm a classical liberal who always despised realpolitik engagement with despotic governments. But really, what fr!gg!n' difference does that make? He changed his policies, he learned, and that's to his credit. I prefer that to your position that his pre-9/11 policies were wrong, he changed them to a very opposite view, and he's STILL wrong. Think about it.

I reiterate, poring over the minutiae of pre 9/11 policy is a waste of time, and the only reason its being pored over is to find tidbits for partisan gain.

You said: Why should we be impressed by Bush's performance when he failed to protect this country on 9/11

My answer is that I'm impressed by his CONVERSION, by his immediate 9/12 recognition of the seriousness of terrorism despite his previous policies, and by his assertive response.

On the subject of how to deal with terrorism in foreign nations, I think you mischaracterize both mine and the Bush administration's policy. Somehow, to you, Iraq is evidence that invasion is the preferred first resort. You said:

you seem to believe, as Bush does, that the answer to combatting terrorism is in overturning the foreign governments who sponsor them.

This is at best a gross oversimplification of the policy, a rhetorical straw man. You are smarter than that. That's not the policy, not mine, and not Bush's. He called a variety of governments on the carpet to stop fostering terrorism and begin cooperating AGAINST terrorists, or face the consequences. So while you characterize the policy as "the answer is to overturn governments," I'd characterize it as follows:

1.Call out nations that are fostering or tolerating terrorists, and tell them they'd better re-think it.

2. Demand and expect reform and cooperation.

3. Don't be especially patient with stonewalling.

I am very interested to hear you describe what your non-invasive "preferred policy" towards Afghanistan would have been.