A fascinating inside take on America's war on terror, focussing on where the author thinks it went wrong.
Chapter 1 expertly captures the initial confusion and panic on that September morning inside the US administration. They knew an attack had begun but that many more could soon follow, a list of key targets was quickly put together and buildings evacuated. The White House was emptied, the president rushed onto a plane and towards a safe location. As passenger information began to filter through it was quickly established who was responsible. The book captures the scramble to ground all planes, to find out how many may be hijacked, 100 was the number feared at one stage, video conferences were hastily arranged to try and put together as much information as possible and to take quick decisions. Inside bunkers the US leaders tried to coordinate the responsible, a death toll of between 10,000-50,000 was feared in New York at tone point. It seems early on obvious it was a huge failure on the part of the FBI and the CIA to find and arrest the hijackers. President Bush was described as privately furious and demanding retribution. The writer also records his shock when after an exhausting long day he returned back to the office only to be told he must discover evidence to prove Iraq was behind the attack.
The next few chapters are devoted to a how we got here case.
Chapter 2 begins by explaining how 1979 was a pivotal year for the US in the cold war. The middle east suddenly became increasingly vital, the US lost one of it’s few allies during the 1979 revolution in Iran, a new hard-line islamist movement took power, meanwhile the Soviets entered Afghanistan in large numbers, not pausing just around Kabul but moving into every area of the country, taking the US and Carter totally off guard. Under Ronald Reagan the policy was to expand US influence and weaken the USSR. There was genuine concern that the Soviets could keep driving down into the middle east and take control of the world’s oil supplies. This fear though was probably based on faulty intelligence it’s admitted. The main charge laid at the door of the US government during the 1980s according to the writer is that it allowed Iranian and Syrian backed terrorists to drive them out of Lebanon, demonstrating that terrorism could defeat US willpower it seemed. The author though does believe it was right to support Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, given the hostility now in Iran to the US and it’s interest. The main plan though was to use Afghanistan as a base to draw the soviets into a conflict, forcing them to massively overspend and damaging their economy. The Afghan rebels scored some early victories but by 1985/6 helicopter attacks were beginning to take their toll on the rebel forces. By supplying them with Stinger missiles this took away that air power advantage. The author believes this was a correct strategy, and that no stringers were later used against American forces, given that they had limited battery life, many were returned and the funding ended once the soviets left. Had the soviets not made the mistake of trying to conquer the rural mountain regions they may have had greater success it’s argued. Clarke though believes the US made 3 mistakes, 1 being too reliant on Pakistan to channel arms, 2 little being known about the Arab volunteers entering the country, I’m not sure about this, wouldn’t it be just obvious they'd be hardcore jihadists? 3 the US lost interest in the country once the Soviets pulled out, the US had little influence now over events on the ground after. The US government did achieve it’s objective, winning the cold war did matter according to Clarke.
Chapter 3 looks at the Bush years in the early 1990s.
The Gulf war is quickly covered. There’s no embarrassing admission from Clarke that Saddam was a US ally during the 1980s. He seems to have skipped over this part. Some he argues were keen to avoid staying for years in Saudi Arabia to defend the country, therefore a quick victory, with a big broad collation was the correct approach. Clarke argues the US should not have entered Iraq afterwards, expect to protect forces encouraged to rise up against Saddam. The major US concern again during this time was oil, though the US government tried to argue otherwise. Saddam taking control of the worlds oil was not acceptable.
The book also covers how close Iraq had come by 1991 to developing nuclear weapons, though ones it probably couldn’t yet deploy. By that period though the world was changing, the cold war was over, religion was becoming a more powerful political force in the middle east, new splinter groups, failed states, rogue nations were emerging. Little is said about Bush, the writer doesn’t seem to like giving him any credit compared to Clinton. The world trade centre bombing in 1993 is covered then, another security failure, attacks on US home soil were unexpected at the time it seemed. Terror networks were uncovered, Bin Laden’s name is mentioned though his role appears unclear at the time. Clinton at the same time had to deal with the fear of weapons of mass destruction across the world falling into the wrong hands, Saddam still a threat in the middle east, state sponsorship of terrorism, and new terror groups different from those in Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine. A plot is uncovered by Iraqi intelligence officers to try and assassinate former president Bush, this is foiled and Clinton allows a limited retaliatory strike. Clinton it feels can do little wrong in Clarke’s eyes.
The book does suffer slightly from a “I was right all along” sense. How much of this was hindsight, how fair is it to look back to the 1990s and say we should have seen all this coming? For instance keeping US troops in Saudi Arabia seemed the right thing to do at the time, what was Richard Clarke’s view on that and how much did he see that as stoking anger against the US in the middle east? Clinton had 8 years in office, Bush had less than 1, yet he takes much of the blame in Clarke’s view for failing to take down Al-Qaeda.
The rest of the book continues on through the 1990s. Bin Laden by this point with in the Sudan, exporting arms and financing terror in Egypt, the Philippines and Bosnia. Clarke oddly though claims Bosnia was a US success, though I’m not sure I agree with that. After much pressure Bin Laden switched location to Afghanistan. The military and the CIA under Clinton were reluctant to take action, seeing any mission to take him out as a risky anti terror opp on hostile foreign soil. There were even concerns it might be illegal too. Nor was there an appetite to invade and try to occupy Afghanistan. Russia had been there for over 10 years and taken heavy casualties, never fully controlling the country. By 1996/7 the CIA was looking into plans to snatch Bin Laden from Afghanistan, even drawing up plans to land on a small dirt airplane strip. It was decided thought the compounds he was staying in were too well guarded and casualties would be high.
Meanwhile back on US homeland Clake had a great fear that there might be a bio weapon attack or a chemical attack. It was clear to him that many cities were unprepared, committees squabbled over funding and many mayors were not interested in the threat. The writer describes how he pushed hard for increased funding, rehearsals for attacks, a fire truck that could decontaminate an underground station and hundreds of people all at once. We then push forward to 1998 with US embassies bombed in Africa. Clarke pushed hard for a strong retaliation, cruise missiles strikes were launched by Clinton against terror camps in Afghanistan, though Clarke believes the build up of ships near Pakistan allowed Pakistan to tip off the Taliban that the strikes were being launched. Clarke even believed that Pakistan army intelligence officers may have been embedded in the Taliban at the time. Equally Pakistan would not have allowed US planes to fly over it’s airspace on the way to bomb targets in Afghanistan. Cruise missiles though take hours from being fired to hitting their targets, often the surprise is lost. Helicopter raids were also ruled out too. Instead Clarke then describes himself looking at how to cut off the finances of the terror group. This involved difficult conversations with the Saudis, Clarke describes the FBI as slow to respond, feeling themselves to be bound by the law, the CIA was also experiencing a culture of not getting to grips with the issue. Drones were launched over Afghanistan, but back in the late 90s they had no weaponry.
Next came the bombing of a US ship in Yemen while in port, killing 17 US sailors. Security in Yemen was poor and Clarke was furious the ship had chosen to dock there. Terror camps in Afghanistan were not bombed though and Clarke saw this as a missed chance. The location of Bin Laden was also unknown. Intelligence was very poor, they often found out after where he had been staying, but never where he would be in say 3 days time. President Clinton was now out of time and election brought a new administration into power.
Clarke seemed to find himself with reduced influence in the new administration, few people took his warnings seriously, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice all missed his warnings he claims. Meetings he asked for urgently were delayed. The new administration was more concerned about Iraq, not a terror organisation few people had ever heard of. A plan was suggested to put pressure on Pakistan and to finance the Northern Alliance. The director of the CIA though seemed to be on board with Clarke’s view. In the months leading up to 9-11 information wasn’t shared properly which should have prevented the attacks.
Clarke then sets out what the US response should have been after the attacks. Bush should concentrated firstly on tightening up homeland vulnerabilities. Next Al-Qaeda should have been vigorously pursued and destroyed it’s funding cut off while Bush travelled the middle east, rallying support for the US and urging the Islamic world to unite against terror.
What in fact followed was in invasion of Iraq which according to Clarke inflamed world opinion against America, the motives for war always shifting. Bush declared you were either with him or against him, meanwhile new departments were created, security became messy, departments began competing with no clear focus or overall leadership. Clarke makes it clear though he still believes in the civil rights and liberties of it’s citizens. He doesn’t want to see suspects arrested and held without trial or access to a lawyer. To his dismay the US government was also slashing funding by 2003 for police and fire departments, right at the wrong moment.
Clarke views the war on terror as a battle of ideas, a new ideological mission is needed he writes to spread American ideas of plurality, democracy and capitalism. Clarke accepts that in the late 90s Clinton signed into law that regime change would become US policy. Still he feels this is not a justification for invasion. Efforts by the US government to link the war on terror and 9-11 with Iraq appalled Clarke, though Bush later did admit there was no evidence Iraq was involved in 9-11. Clarke feels strongly that the US failed to properly deploy troops quickly into Afghanistan in a search and destroy mission. The Taliban and it’s allies were able to slip away to the mountains to regroup, while the US held back it’s forces for an invasion of Iraq instead. The book claims this actually then overstretched the US army, a further mistake was then disbanding the Iraqi army, many of whom did not resist initially the US invasion, pensions were removed, a huge mistake he claims. Now the US had 100,000 trained armed hostile Iraqi fighters ready to go after them. The book though finishes with an apology that 9-11 was allowed to happen. The book makes it pretty clear that president Clinton was a good president who took it all very seriously, any failures Clarke feels is because he was let down by his military and CIA, where as Bush did not treat the threat seriously enough and took the wrong actions after the attack.
All in all a pretty good read, partly 1st person account, but also very descriptive and providing lots of context and background information. The book is also very early 2000s, things have changed quite a bit now in the Middle East. Iraq in 2021 is in quite a different state to the country at the time this book was being written. While the threat to the US from Islamic terror attacks has not gone away, there has not been another big one either.
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