Mark Steyn: Bush has nothing to fear from this hilarious work of fiction

The Sunday Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 03/28/04 | Mark Steyn

[Pokey78]

In January 2002, the Enron story broke and the media turned their attention to the critical question: how can we pin this on Bush? As I wrote in this space that weekend: "Short answer: You can't."

So Enron retreated to the business pages, and, after a while, the media and the Democrats came up with an even better wheeze: how can we pin September 11 on Bush? Same answer: you can't. But that doesn't stop them every month or so from taking a wild ride on defective vehicles for their crazy scheme.

The latest is a mid-level bureaucrat called Richard Clarke, and by the time you read this his 15 minutes should be just about up. Mr Clarke was Bill Clinton's terrorism guy for eight years and George W Bush's for a somewhat briefer period, and he has now written a book called If Only They'd Listened to Me - whoops, sorry, that should be Against All Enemies: Inside the White House's War on Terror - What Really Happened (Because They Didn't Listen to Me).

Having served both the 42nd and 43rd Presidents, Clarke was supposed to be the most authoritative proponent to advance the Democrats' agreed timeline of the last decade - to whit, from January 1993 to January 2001, Bill Clinton focused like a laser on crafting a brilliant plan to destroy al-Qa'eda, but, alas, just as he had dotted every "i", crossed every "t" and sent the intern to the photocopier, his eight years was up, so Bill gave it to the new guy as he was showing him the Oval Office - "That carpet under the desk could use replacing. Oh, and here's my brilliant plan to destroy al-Qa'eda, which you guys really need to implement right away."

The details of the brilliant plan need not concern us, which is just as well, as there aren't any. But the broader point, as The New York Times noted, is that "there was at least no question about the Clinton administration's commitment to combat terrorism".

Yessir, for eight years the Clinton administration was relentless in its commitment: no sooner did al-Qa'eda bomb the World Trade Center first time round, or blow up an American embassy, or a barracks, or a warship, or turn an entire nation into a terrorist training camp, than the Clinton team would redouble their determination to sit down and talk through the options for a couple more years. Then Bush took over and suddenly the superbly successful fight against terror all went to hell.

Richard Clarke was supposed to be the expert who could make this argument with a straight face. And, indeed, his week started well. The media were very taken by this passage from his book, in which he alerts Mr Bush's incoming National Security Adviser to the terrorist threat: "As I briefed Rice on al-Qa'eda, her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard of the term before, so I added, 'Most people think of it as Osama bin Laden's group, but it's much more than that. It's a network of affiliated terrorist organisations with cells in over 50 countries, including the US.' "

Mr Clarke would seem to be channelling Leslie Nielsen's deadpan doctor in Airplane!: "Stewardess, we need to get this passenger to a hospital."

"A hospital? What is it?"

"It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now."

As it turns out, Clarke's ability to read "facial expressions" is not as reliable as one might wish in a "counter-terrorism expert". In October the previous year, Dr Rice gave an interview to WJR Radio in Detroit in which she discoursed authoritatively on al-Qa'eda and bin Laden - and without ever having met Richard Clarke!

I don't know how good Clarke was at counter-terrorism, but as a media performer he is a total dummy. He seemed to think that he could claim the lucrative star role of Lead Bush Basher without anybody noticing the huge paper trail of statements he has left contradicting the argument in his book.

The reality is that there is a Richard Clarke for everyone. If you are like me and reckon there was an Islamist angle to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, then Clarke's your guy: he supports the theory that al-Qa'eda operatives in the Philippines "taught Terry Nichols how to blow up the Oklahoma Federal Building".

On the other hand, if you're one of those Michael Moore-type conspirazoids who wants to know why Bush let his cronies in the House of Saud and the bin Laden family sneak out of America on September 11, then Clarke's also your guy: he is the official who gave the go-ahead for the bigshot Saudis with the embarrassing surnames to be hustled out of the country before they could be questioned.

Does this mean Clarke is Enron - an equal-opportunity scandal whose explicitly political aspects are too ambiguous to offer crude party advantage? Not quite. Although his book sets out to praise Clinton and bury Bush, he can't quite pull it off. Except for his suggestion to send in a team of "ninjas" to take out Osama, Clinton had virtually no interest in the subject.

In October 2000, Clarke and Special Forces Colonel Mike Sheehan leave the White House after a meeting to discuss al-Qa'eda's attack on the USS Cole: "'What's it gonna take, Dick?' Sheehan demanded. 'Who the s*** do they think attacked the Cole, f****** Martians? The Pentagon brass won't let Delta go get bin Laden. Does al-Qa'eda have to attack the Pentagon to get their attention?'"

Apparently so. The attack, on the Cole, which killed 17 US sailors, was deemed by Clinton's Defence Secretary Bill Cohen as "not sufficiently provocative" to warrant a response. You'll have to do better than that, Osama! So he did. And now the same people who claim Bush had no right to be "pre-emptive" about Iraq insist he should have been about September 11.

As for Clarke's beef with Bush, that's simple. For eight years, he had pottered away on the terrorism brief undisturbed. The new President took it away from him and adopted the strategy outlined by Condoleezza Rice in that Detroit radio interview, months before the self-regarding Mr Clarke claims he brought her up to speed on who bin Laden was: "We really need a stronger policy of holding the states accountable that support him," Dr Rice told WJR. "Terrorists who are just operating out there without basis and without state support are a lot less dangerous than ones that find safe haven, as bin Laden does sometimes in places like Afghanistan or Sudan."

Just so. In the 1990s when al-Qa'eda blew up American targets abroad, the FBI would fly in and work it as a "crime scene" - like a liquor-store hold-up in Cleveland. It doesn't address the problem. Sure, there are millions of disaffected young Muslim men, but, if they get the urge to blow up infidels, they need training and organisation. Somehow all those British Taliban knew that if you wanted a quick course in jihad studies Afghanistan was the place to go. Bush got it right: go to where the terrorists are, overthrow their sponsoring regimes, destroy their camps, kill their leaders.

Instead, all the Islamists who went to Afghanistan in the 1990s graduated from Camp Osama and were dispersed throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and North America, where they lurk to this day. That's the Clarke-Clinton legacy. And, if it were mine, I wouldn't be going around boasting about it.

[Irish Eyes]

Thanks for posting another brilliant piece by Mark Steyn, he says it like no one else.

[lainde]

bttt

[WarrenC]

The net result of all this hubbub is a major victory for the Bush campaign, turning public interest toward terrorism.

Exactly so. And regarding the NY Times line...could that paper's free-fall from credibilty and respect be any more accelerated?

[Scenic Sounds]

I think this whole Clarke thing is pretty silly. Maybe some people think they would feel safer if they could just convince themselves that 9-11 could have been easily prevented. The alternative - accepting that it could not have been easily prevented - is perhaps too close to accepting that something similar could happen again.

Most people probably don't like thinking about any of this at all.

[hershey]

Well, Clarke is now employed by ABC News as an 'analyst'.

[LibertarianLiz]

another bump - great Steyn column.

[livius]

Yes, I think you're right. There were a lot of very funny Freeper comments, in addition, and I seem to have run them all together.

[Congressman Billybob]

I just hope yer Congresscritter Billybob, comes in a (distant) second to Mark Steyn in your rating of articles about Clarke. Mine is "Red Rover Come Over, and Quick." Up on FreeRepublic since early today.

Cheers,

John / Billybob

[Nita Nupress]

It leaves me to wonder who Richard Clarke is really working for, and why.

I've had the same thought. Wasn't it only last week that Bush was taking heat from the Dems & the media for using 9-11 in his terrorism ads? All by his lonesome and almost overnight, Richard Clarke took that issue off the front page and then made it legitimate for Bush.

Surely the guy isn't this clueless.

[M. Dodge Thomas]

"From now on, terrorism is a legitimate issue for Bush to discuss..."

OK. But what does the enable Administration do *differently*? Rove was already running a campaign based on highlighting exactly this issue, I don't see that addiotnal media attentoin to Clarke (and other critics) increases the Adminsitrations control over the agenda.

------------

As a political tactic, one thing I found especially worrisome was Bill First's announcement that Clarke has no right to apologize for the intelligence failures preceding 9/11.

This is a politically tone-deaf statement if I ever heard one - the problem is that in this case there clearly *were* serious mistakes, and a lot of them, made by two Administrations over a decade.

And it's pretty absurd to maintain - after a handful of men had spent months wandering around the country, getting flight training without bothering to learn how to land, and then hijacked four aircraft and flew them into buildings –that it's nobody's fault (or at least, it was all someone else's fault).

That's the nerve that Clarke clearly touched in a lot of people when he apologized for the fact that he had done his best – and it just wasn't good enough.

Now, this isn’t a problem unique to this Administration, it's a generic problem with US style governance; any admission of error is treaded as an admission of weakness, and given our political culture it's an act of political suicide.

Most other places with elected governments have ways of dealing with these situations; most typically the Ministers in charge of the organizations that have failed offer their resignations, the Prime Minister accepts, the voters (quite reasonable) desire that someone accept responsibility is at least partially satisfied, and political life goes on.

Here, though, the electoral calculus demands that the sitting government refuse to accept any responsibility (however apparent at least some responsibility may be) and it's reduced to attacking the veracity of anyone who says otherwise and shifting it's share of the blame elsewhere. (IMO, a Democratic administration would likely be pursuing the same basic strategy if the situation were reversed).

And if the mistake was something people feel strongly about, it's a strategy that eventually is likely to turn on its practitioners.

[Nita Nupress]

Please add me to your Steyn list. Thanks.

[prairiebreeze]

Let's see. So far, if we are counting books, we have O'Neil and Clarke. I understand that Joe Plame will have one coming out and a Freeper commented that Bob Woodward has one due that I assume is to be deragatory to the Bush WH. Hearsay perhaps, but we count 3 if not 4 in the pipeline that we've heard of or know about.

It's a coordinated effort to be certain, but it seems to me that all the publicity that Clark received from See BS, Viacom and the 9-11 duplicitous commission should have payed off more. Especially in view of the Newsweak poll.

Clarke's been discredited by Jim Angle's tape and other sources are surfacing that dispute his timing and his statements. Goss and Frist are talking investigations. Now Steyn's mentioned this: In October the previous year, Dr Rice gave an interview to WJR Radio in Detroit in which she discoursed authoritatively on al-Qa'eda and bin Laden - and without ever having met Richard Clarke!

While Clarke is by no means the last attack dog to be drug out by the RATS against the President, I tend to agree his 15 minutes are about up. Unless he goes to trial and then he'll have another 15 minutes that he will wish he didn't.

Prairie

[sultan88]

Thanks for the ping, j. Reading Steyn always makes me feel a little better.

[mylife]

Thanks Pokey

now the same people who claim Bush had no right to be "pre-emptive" about Iraq insist he should have been about September 11.

[quidnunc]

I'm afraid that I have to disagree with Steyn on this one.

The Dems have been constantly been hammering on Dubya in order to drive his negatives up.

They are currently above 40%, which is the danger zone for any politician seeking election, and significantly above Kerry's.

All this damage is cumulative, and the Dems aren't done — not by a long shot.

And the White House wouldn't be going to battle stations if they didn't consider the situation perilous.

[veronica]

[Western Phil]

"By the way, on tonight's FNC "News Watch" program Jane Whatsherface said that the Bush administration has had a copy of Clarke's book since NOVEMBER!"

I believe works by ex-civil servants employed in sensitive positions are required to be reviewed to make sure there is no classified information in them. Didn't seem to happen for the O'neil fellow.

[quidnunc]

Western Phil wrote: ("By the way, on tonight's FNC "News Watch" program Jane Whatsherface said that the Bush administration has had a copy of Clarke's book since NOVEMBER!") I believe works by ex-civil servants employed in sensitive positions are required to be reviewed to make sure there is no classified information in them. Didn't seem to happen for the O'neil fellow.

The only people in the administration who saw the book were the lawyers who vetted it for national-security issues.

Nobody else saw it.

[M. Dodge Thomas]

"See the poll in Newsweak"

That's what got me thinking about this in the first place:

"March 27 ... According to the latest NEWSWEEK poll, the percentage of voters who say they approve of the way the president has handled terrorism and homeland security has slid to 57 percent, down from a high of 70 percent two months ago."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4614818/

At least at this point this shift has not translated into a significant change in voter preference. But IMO it certainly does not seem like evidence of a successful counterattack.

[CyberAnt]

Ann Coulter's email said the book had some kind of rating - about readability or something .. and Clarke's book got a poltry 35. By her comments I suspect that's not very good.