Demosophia

Clarke's Inexplicable Kamikaze Attack

Clarke was terrorism Czar under Clinton, yet fails to seriously fault Clinton for having blown opportunities to kill Bin Laden on numerous occasions, as well as Saddam. I point this out not to argue that Clinton should or could have done more, but as a signal of a rather extraordinarily petulant agenda that almost places Clarke in the position of being a "suicide attacker of the angry left."

Richard Clarke was demoted when the Bush people came into office, and was assigned a task that he obviously thought beneath him. He had a peeve that there was no Saddam/AQ link and was given the task of looking for evidence of such a link, something he clearly regards as insulting. In other words he was given the task of challenging his own prejudgments, and what he apparently did in lieu of fulfilling that assignment was to go out and compile what he considered evidence that there was no link, a rather petulant response to an administration that was seeking to comprehend (or perhaps even catch up to) a rather inscrutible enemy. In other words he refused to do what was asked of him, not to "manufacture evidence" but to look for evidence he didn't think was there. This borders on insubordination. He clearly thought he ought to have been employed creating a "grand strategy," not doing this lowly gumshoe work. His methodological ineptitude prevented him from seeing that this is a standard way to test an hypothesis, and is really rather straightforward scientific method. Clearly the Administration could see he wasn't doing what was asked, and their big mistake was that they didn't fire him on the spot. He was essentially incompetent, and this entire tirade involving media interviews, formal testimony, and a book is simply a monumental manifestation of that incompetence.

(And no, I am NOT saying that they should have fired him for not finding the evidence of a link. They should have fired him for not looking for it. The fellow is apparently so dense he can't even tell the difference.)

There have been numerous articles about the CIA's findings regarding the links that Clarke wishes out of existence, but one might start with Tenet's own recent testimony on the matter (and note that Clarke claims that Tenet agreed with him, which he certainly did not), and several articles by Stephen Hayes in The Weekly Standard. The original one is here, but he also wrote a follow up to answer the inevitable attacks from the "see no evil" crowd. The Atta/Prague connection was covered by Edward Epstein in Slate, which also had followups. Almost a total media blackout on this, but it was covered extensively in the blogs. We all watched the story get buried, either through laziness or simply because it challenged the prevailing consensus and media bias. Whatever.

Here's a relevant section in a directive that UBL gave his followers as part of his Declaration of War Against the Americans on August 8, 1996:

Ibn Taymiyyah, after mentioning the Moguls (Tatar) and their behavior in changing the law of Allah, stated that: the ultimate aim of pleasing Allah, raising His word, instituting His religion and obeying His messenger (ALLAH'S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM) is to fight the enemy, in every aspects (sic) and in a complete manner; if the danger to the religion from not fighting is greater than that of fighting, then it is a duty to fight them even if the intention of some of the fighter (sic) is not pure i.e., fighting for the sake of leadership (personal gain) or if they do not observe some of the rules and commandments of Islam. To repel the greatest of the two dangers on the expense of the lesser one is an Islamic principle which should be observed. It was the tradition of the Sunnah (Ahlul Sunnah) to join and invade fight (sic) with the righteous and non righteous men. [Note, this is a reference to the Sunni founders, and their doctrines, and specifically discusses the notion of [u]joining forces "of the righteous and non-righteous" under a Sunni tribal banner[/u].] Allah may support this religion by righteous and non righteous people as told by the prophet (ALLAH'S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM).

I'm going to assume I don't need to interpret this point by point, because the meaning is fairly clear. By this time (1996), according to the memo that Hayes outlines in the Fieth memo annex, the cooperation between Saddam and AQ was about three years old. The point of presenting this directive, which predates the Bush Administration by four years, is that the burden of proof is on those who contend that there was no Saddam/AQ link, not the other way around as has been portrayed, and as Clarke presumes in his preposterous and unsupported allegations. The Bush people simply tried to get him to begin implementing an intelligence method that was appropriate to the threat, and he refused. As someone with a fairly good grasp of the situation recently observed, after noting that both Lieberman and Biden had disavowed Clarke's allegations as false and devoid of fact: "Wow, these guys seem like suicide bombers. They destroy their own reputation in an attempt to be part of the angry left."

Posted by Demosophist at March 22, 2004 12:51 PM | TrackBack