Reviewing Books by Unpleasant People

If you look at the sidebar on the right-hand side of this blog, you'll see Richard A. Clarke's Against All Enemies. This is one of the earliest "insider" books about the September 11 attacks, and Clarke looks at both the events leading up to 9/11 and the Bush administration's reaction to that supreme act of terrorism. A number of the other books on the subject are reacting to Clarke in one way or another. Michael Scheuer spends quite a bit of time in Marching Toward Hell, which was reviewed on this blog some time ago, criticizing Clarke.

My own review of Against All Enemies is half-written. I find Clarke easy to criticize. He's pompous; he is critical of others but never finds fault with his own actions or omissions; he has the defensive attitude one finds in people who feels they've been left out of the inner circle. In fact, a lot of Clarke's criticism of the Bush administration as a whole, and Condoleeza Rice in particular, comes down to "They didn't listen to me!" In short, Clarke is a rather unpleasant person. It would be easy to dismiss him as a self-justifying ass.

But that isn't the whole truth. Clarke was an insider, and he was involved in counterterrorism and related activities for many years. He worked at the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House. He was in on a lot of investigations and discussions. He was "read in" on the subject to an extraordinary degree. So there is a lot of valuable material in Against All Enemies. You just have to get past the blowhard, know-it-all narrator to find it.

All of which is by way of saying that I have found this a very difficult book to review. I found myself spending a lot of time criticizing Clarke's personal qualities, rather than attending to the substance of the book. Now that I've gotten this off my chest, I hope the review itself will be easier to finish.

Have a good day!