Against All Enemies - A Review

Clarke, Richard A. Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Free Press, 2004. xiii + 304 pages. Index. $27.00. ISBN: 0-7432-6024-4.

The opening chapter of Against All Enemies describes the scene at the White House during and after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Fearing that another plane was aiming for Washington, the Secret Service ordered the building to be evacuated. Richard Clarke, the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counterterrorism, and a few stalwart souls hang in there, monitoring events, calling upon the resources of other agencies, and generally managing the response to the disaster. This is what the permanent staff of the government does: They manage crises. The story makes a great set piece to lead off the book, and it establishes Richard Clarke’s credentials as a man at the center of events, respected by his colleagues, and in command of the reins of power.

Richard Clarke reached that eminence by serving in a series of posts in the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House during a thirty-year civil service career. One of the characteristics that Mr. Clarke brought to these various posts was a chip-on-the-shoulder attitude that appears to have arisen from his belief that professional military, intelligence, and diplomatic officers regarded civil servants as less accomplished, or less dedicated, than themselves. Mr. Clarke makes a point of noting that his hiring other civil servants when he was Assistant Secretary of State for Politico-Military Affairs irritated the career Foreign Service personnel with whom he worked. He also makes a point of every petty bureaucratic battle he ever won.

The remainder of the book is both a history of the U.S. Government’s efforts to come to grips with terrorism, foreign and domestic, and an account of Mr. Clarke’s working life. Chapter 2, “Stumbling into the Islamic World,” reviews the experience of the Reagan administration, including the several disasters in Beirut, Lebanon, during that period. The chapter title conveys Mr. Clarke’s impression of the direction of our efforts in that part of the world. The chapter ends with the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and apparent American victory which would eventually turn to ashes in our mouths.

In subsequent chapters Mr. Clarke reviews the first Bush administration’s experience with the Gulf War, which he refers to as “unfinished,” the rise of Islamic terrorism during the Clinton years, and the many threads that led to the discovery of Al Qaeda. This is in some ways the strongest part of Against All Enemies, as Mr. Clarke recounts how the investigations of apparently unrelated events led eventually to the realization that there was a single organization behind the World Trade Center attack of 1993, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, the 1998 attacks on U.S. Embassies in Africa, and this strange Saudi businessman, Osama bin Laden. This historical review ends, with Chapter 9, in the observation that the Bush administration found it rather odd that the Clinton people identified the elimination of bin Laden as one of the top national security priorities.

The chapter on “Before and After September 11,” in which Mr. Clarke critiques the Bush administrations counterterrorism efforts is probably the most quoted part of the book. After all, this is where he shows Bush’s national security team ignoring his many warnings about terrorism, and choosing to focus on missile defense and doing away with the ABM treaty. In fact, he concludes that there was very little chance, given the developments to date, that Bush could have stopped the 9/11 attacks. There might have been a chance for Clinton to have disrupted Al Qaeda enough to have prevented that kind of action, but, by January 20, 2001, the die was cast. As for the period after 9/11, Clarke characterizes the decision to invade Afghanistan as “plainly obvious,” but Bush’s efforts as “slow and small.” His assessment of the decision to invade Iraq – “Far from addressing the popular appeal of the enemy that attacked us, Bush handed that enemy precisely what it wanted and needed, proof that America was at war with Islam, that we were the new Crusaders come to occupy Muslim land.”

In the final chapter, “Right War, Wrong War,” Richard Clarke gives us his policy prescriptions for the dealing with terrorism. Rather, for dealing “with the fundamental problems revealed by the terrorist attacks.” Clarke’s three items are: “a massive effort to eliminate our vulnerabilities to terrorism at home,” “a concerted effort globally to counter the ideology of al Qaeda and the larger radical Islamic terrorist movement,” and to cooperate with other countries to “round up terrorists” and to “strengthen open governments and make it possible politically, economically, and socially for them to go after the roots of al Qaeda-like terrorism.” Which open governments? Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.

One oddity that I need to mention here is that there is a point on which Richard A. Clarke and Doug Feith, the former Undersecretary for Policy in the Defense Department, agree. They both assert that the U.S. government has not developed an effective means to counter the ideological message of the Islamist movement. I might add that such a means, if we could develop and apply it, would make both turning America into a fortress, and rounding up terrorists overseas, unnecessary.

If you are interested in the origins of the September 11 attacks, and in the manner in which the U.S. government developed (or failed to develop) its counterterrorist policies, Against All Enemies is a good place to start.