the Greater Nomadic Council

The Anatomy and Rebuttal of an NRO Attack

As a willing part of the Bush attack machine, NRO's Clifford May has a new article up attacking Richard Clarke in order to undermine his potentially damaging claims about the Bush administration. Nevermind that even bloggers like Daniel Drezner think Clarke is credible. Of course, many well-respected conservative bloggers such as Drezner try to honestly assess each issue, whereas most NRO writers seem more interested in supporting Bush via any means necessary. May's article is the latest example, hence this rebuttal.

Auspiciously enough for my task, May opens his article with this:

The Bush administration is now being harshly criticized for (1) its policies of preemption and unilateralism and for (2) not unilaterally preempting the Taliban and al Qaeda immediately after coming into office in January 2001.

This disingenuous attempt to conflate Clarke with war opposers while implying a contradiction in Clarke's position is standard procedure throughout the article. Naturally, May is factually correct about the first point, but the second point is an exaggeration. Clarke is not criticizing the administration for not attacking al Qaeda "immediately after coming into office" but for discounting the threat terrorism in general and al Qaeda specifically posed while largely ignoring his and Tenet's worries about an impending attack. In an interview with Clarke on Salon, he has this to say:

Why do you think Cheney -- and the Bush administration in general -- ignored the warnings that were put to them by [former national security advisor] Sandy Berger, by you, by George Tenet, who is apparently somebody they hold in great esteem?

They had a preconceived set of national security priorities: Star Wars, Iraq, Russia. And they were not going to change those preconceived notions based on people from the Clinton administration telling them that was the wrong set of priorities. They also looked at the statistics and saw that during eight years of the Clinton administration, al-Qaida killed fewer than 50 Americans. And that's relatively few, compared to the 300 dead during the Reagan administration at the hands of terrorists in Beirut -- and by the way, there was no military retaliation for that from Reagan. It was relatively few compared to the 259 dead on Pan Am 103 in the first Bush administration, and there was no military retaliation for that. So looking at the low number of American fatalities at the hands of al-Qaida, they might have thought that it wasn't a big threat.

However, May's exaggeration and simplification of the issue could almost be excused if it were not part of a subtle and dishonest undermining of Clarke's character through the juxtaposition of the two contradictory points he opens with.

Next, May implies that Clarke is interested more in attacking Bush than fighting terrorism:

Richard Clarke, a long-time terrorism adviser, is leading the attack against the president, claiming that the Bush administration "squandered the opportunity to eliminate al Qaeda."

What's curious is that Clarke does not make the same charge regarding the Clinton administration. It was during that administration, you'll recall, that al Qaeda was founded, that it declared war on America, bombed two of our embassies in Africa, and attacked the USS Cole.

Not only does May further tie Clarke in to the anti-war, anti-Bush crowd by claiming Clarke is "leading the attack against" Bush, but he misrepresents Clinton's record against terrorism. Again, from the Salon interview:

The vice president commented that there was "no great success in dealing with terrorists" during the 1990s, when you were serving under President Clinton. He asked, "What were they doing?"

It's possible that the vice president has spent so little time studying the terrorist phenomenon that he doesn't know about the successes in the 1990s. There were many. The Clinton administration stopped Iraqi terrorism against the United States, through military intervention. It stopped Iranian terrorism against the United States, through covert action. It stopped the al-Qaida attempt to have a dominant influence in Bosnia. It stopped the terrorist attacks at the millennium. It stopped many other terrorist attacks, including on the U.S. embassy in Albania. And it began a lethal covert action program against al-Qaida; it also launched military strikes against al-Qaida.

And this, from a recent AP article:

Bill Clinton gave the CIA "every inch of authorization that it asked for" to carry out plans to kill Osama bin Laden, the former president's national security adviser testified Wednesday, bluntly disputing claims that the spy agency lacked the authority it needed.

So, although a criticism of Clinton's approach to fighting terrorism is certainly fair game, May implies here that Clinton did nothing and that Clarke is giving him a pass on the issue. It is possible that Clarke is easier on Clinton than Bush in his book, but if so, there's a perfectly good reason for it—Bush is the current president. Criticizing his terrorism policies might make a difference, unlike criticizing Clinton. Furthermore, it's clear from the substance of his complaints that Clarke finds Bush's actions against terrorism insufficient and much worse than Clinton's. Of course, May has another motive in this passage. He's implying that Clarke is nothing more than an anti-Bush Clinton-lover which is decidedly untrue. Clarke served under four different administrations. Impugning his motives as nothing more than partisan bitterness is ridiculous.

May then digresses so that he can bash Clinton for a while and show that there was practically nothing "President Bush have done between January and September of 2001". When he finishes with that, he gets back to the character assassination:

Clearly, Clarke did not manage to persuade many State Department officials that terrorism was a grave threat that required a robust response. Michael Ledeen, in his fine book, The War Against the Terror Masters, points to an op-ed that ran in the New York Times on July 10, 2001 — almost exactly two months before the 9/11 attack. Written by Larry C. Johnson, a former State Department counterterrorism specialist, it reflected the conventional wisdom within America's foreign-policy elites.

This part is particularly interesting since it actually reinforces Clarke's claims that his concerns went largely ignored. May also manages to imply that it was Clarke's job to sell his ideas, rather than the administration's job to listen to the concerns of someone they had appointed to deal with terrorism. I guess all our government officials should also have degrees in marketing so they can convince the president to listen to them. Regardless, May uses the views of one former State Department employee to suggest that everyone in the administration held the same beliefs when it's clear that Clarke, the terrorism expert, and George Tenet, the head of the CIA, both disagreed and tried repeatedly to convince Bush, Rice, and others of the urgent threat posed by terrorists.

Next, compare this quote:

Despite this, Clarke also goes easy on the State Department in his new book, Against All Enemies. This is puzzling and makes one wonder what theories might be offered by Clarke's friend, Rand Beers, who left the Bush administration to join the Kerry campaign.

With this:

Were you concerned about your friendship with Rand Beers being used, as it is now, to suggest that you did this in order to help John Kerry in his presidential campaign?

This is the most interesting charge against me -- that I am a friend of Rand Beers, as if that's some terrible thing. Who is Rand Beers? Until a year ago, he was someone who was working for George Bush in the White House. He worked for George Bush's father in the White House. He worked for Ronald Reagan in the White House. But now it's a terrible thing to be a friend of Rand Beers? He and I have been friends for 25 years. I'm not going to disown him because he's working for John Kerry. He's my friend, he's going to stay my friend, we teach a course together [at Harvard]. He works for John Kerry. I don't.

The first is from May's article, the second from the Salon interview. This is yet another example of May wrongfully implying that Clarke is a Democrat intent on taking down Bush.

To continue the guilt by association, May writes this:

Clarke also mentions in his book "my friend Joe Wilson," the former diplomat who for reasons that remain mysterious was sent to Niger to check out the possibility that Saddam had attempted to purchase uranium — then launched a media blitz accusing President Bush of misleading Americans regarding Iraq, then also signed on with the Kerry campaign. Clarke charges that the administration took "revenge" on Wilson, a charge as yet unproven.

The funniest thing about this quote is the unproven charge that the Bush administration attacked Wilson for "revenge". The Valerie Plame investigation, despite being ignored by the news media, has picked up steam recently and it's been clear from the start that the outing was meant specifically to harm Wilson.

Finally, May caps his article with the heart of his "argument" and makes plain his motives by questioning Clarke's:

Today, Wednesday, Clarke testifies before the 9/11 commission. Will his testimony be helpful to those seriously attempting to craft an effective policy to defeat terrorism? Or will he be selling books and giving a job interview? You watch and you make the call.

Clifford May is not trying to rebut any of Clarke's claims, but he realizes how damaging to Bush Clarke's book might turn out to be; so, like the good attack dog that he is, he attempts to undermine Clarke's credibility. The entire article is nothing more than a smear on Clarke's motives, not a substantive argument. Even when he attempts to defend Bush's record, he does so weakly and half-heartedly, apparently aware of the dangerous terrain onto which he treads. Why does NRO persist in publishing these thinly disguised ad hominem attacks?