As Election Season Winds Down, Clarke Keeps Beating a Critical Drum

Matthew Hersh

Richard Clarke is not known for skirting around the issue when it comes to the handling of pre-9/11 terrorist threats. So it is no surprise that when it comes to battling insurgents in their own cities (namely, Falluja), the former counter-terrorism czar under Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton said U.S. military operations should essentially be the opposite of what they are now.

At last Wednesday's lecture at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Mr. Clarke disproved the theory of pundits who said his motives for speaking out against the execution of the war on terror were only election-year politics. With Mr. Bush's presidency extended into a second term, Mr. Clarke is still attacking the administration's motives for pursuing a war in Iraq.

"What has gone on, not just today or yesterday, but the last six months in Falluja, is an example of how not to do counter-insurgency," Mr. Clarke said.

While acknowledging that the U.S. military has excelled in urban combat, Mr. Clarke thinks that top military officials have fallen short on devising a plan to combat a guerrilla resistance that was widely expected in administrative circles.

"In the days ahead, as the U.S. military congratulates itself on the success of the operations in Falluja, we would all do well to keep in mind the distinction between urban warfare on the one hand, and counter-insurgency on the other and the distinction between the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism."

Sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School, the lecture was delivered largely to undergraduate students and was generally well received by the audience. Mr. Clarke did not appear as the high-level bureaucrat he has been dubbed by his critics. On the contrary: smiling and enjoying the spotlight as he reiterated the pre- and post-9/11 events described in his book Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror (Free Press, 2004), he now has enough material for more than one afterword to his controversial memoir. And while most of his one-hour presentation focused on the U.S. handling of the war in Iraq, he gave some attention to the fundamental problems he thinks were overlooked at the outset.

"President Bush says Iraq is the central front on the war on terror. Some said that's true, but that sentiment is true because President Bush made Iraq the central front on the war on terror by sending 140,000 American targets to Iraq."

Mr. Clarke added that because American soldiers are fighting in Iraq, it is "much more likely" that terrorists will "attack Americans throughout the world."

With the 9/11 Commission purporting no collaborative effort between Iraq and Al Qaeda, Mr. Clarke wondered how 80 percent of Americans held the belief Iraq had a part in 9/11: "How ever did they get that idea? There is now a connection: Iraq, because of the occupation, has become a magnet that has drawn people who were either terrorists or who want to be terrorists into Iraq as the nearest place to go to kill Americans."

Mr. Clarke added that people who were once living "peaceful" lives in Iraq have since become terrorists because they are nationalists.

"When I see the U.S. Army doing what it is doing in Falluja, I think it doesn't understand the very basics of counter-insurgency."

Attempting to characterize the post-9/11 White House, Mr. Clarke cited The Battle of Algiers, a movie that depicts the late-1950s Algerian struggle to free itself from France. After 9/11, Mr. Clarke said, the president asked him and his colleagues to offer up an organizational chart with pictures of the leaders of Al Qaeda. The purpose of this, Mr. Clarke added, was so the president could cross out the faces of those leaders as they were killed or captured.

"I knew I had been there before, and the sense of déja vu bothered me," Mr. Clarke said, as he realized the tactics being carried out by the administration were similar to those in the movie, where there is a chart of Algerians whose faces were to be crossed out as they were captured or killed.

"While the French were capturing or killing the known terrorists, by their tactics, they were creating a whole new generation of terrorists who were alienated specifically because of what the French had done in their war on terrorism," he said.

"We went into Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction, or maybe we went in because we were after Saddam Hussein. Why are we attacking their cities?" Mr. Clarke added that the U.S. had "lost its way."

"What we are doing in Iraq day after day is counterproductive and putting Americans at risk more than they would be otherwise."

Mr. Clarke offered 11 steps in how the administration could defeat "jihadists," including giving economic support to middle eastern states, and creating targeted political strategies in "key" countries.

"We didn't win the Cold War by killing all the Communists," he said, adding that the American media should have been "more critical" when various issues arose: "Maybe with the election out of the way, when we say there's a problem, it won't be perceived as 'political.'"

Perhaps with the election out of the way, neither will Mr. Clarke's message.