The unpolitic truth is that Al Qaeda was not right at the top of anyone's agenda before 9/11 except Richard Clarke's (certainly not Bill Clinton's), there was a massive intelligence failure, and there's plenty of blame to go around on all sides.
You would need to provide some sort of documentation here. The best two books on the Clinton side of things, Sacred Terror and now Clarke, disagree with you. Both argue that Clinton grew into considering Al Q as his top priority such that by 1998 he was obssessed with it.
As for the Bush folk, I agree with your point. It certainly fits the 9-11 commission's staff treatment.
while the Bush adminstration had little use for what they considered a "whack-a-mole" counter-terrorism strategy and sought ways to go after the terror-hosting states. This is the core of the realist/neocon divide and Richard Clarke is on the realist side.
I don't know that I would elevate this difference to the "core of the realist/neocon divide" but it was clearly the big difference. The problem, however, is that the Bush folk did little, at best, with it prior to 9-11. They were looking elsewhere, not at Al Q. This focus on other problems then led them to deal, inadequately, with the chatter in the summer of 01. Clarke's discussion of the difference between the Clinton approach in 99 to the millenium alerts and the Bush approach to the chatter of 01 is both enlightening and, so far, not been challenged in all the motive mongering the Bush attack crew mounts.
As for your comments about Clarke's motives, who knows. It's become standard issue now with the Bush folk that when some former member of the administration writes critical stuff about them they let loose this rabid attack stuff that tries to distract discussion of the issues. |
