Clarke: You probably won't see him here again (CBS)
I have been asked why Jihad Watch is not covering the Richard Clarke foofaw. The answer is simple: I agree with Neil Cavuto's view (thanks to Ruth):
I am focused not so much on threats, real or imagined, before Sept. 11, but on threats very real and far from imagined post-Sept. 11. I find it incredibly ironic that during a week past and present administration officials were being grilled on what they knew and when they knew it, the militant terrorist group Hamas put out a dire warning on what they want to do and when they want to do it.Let's be very frank. Sept. 11 has come and gone. Nothing can bring those nearly 3,000 poor souls back. Mistakes were made, miscues were apparent, intelligence was anything but. But this isn't about correcting wrongs. This is about settling political scores.
And here's what I think: The terrorists are laughing at us. They're laughing at our political infighting. They're laughing at our obsession with all things shallow and nothing substantive. They're laughing at a country more concerned with scoring points than getting answers. And here's the killer, [they're] laughing at us ignoring real killers.
I mean, did anyone find it even a tad odd that as we're going back years, desperately reconstructing a tragic event, some of our worst enemies are reconstructing to do it again?
Hamas doesn't like us. Al Qaeda doesn't like us. A huge chunk of the Muslim world doesn't like us, is recruiting against us, and is focusing on destroying us and those close to us. Look at Madrid. Look at Baghdad. Look at us. And all we can do in turn is play games -- sifting old stories and old excuses in a pale attempt at justice.
Also — Barbara Amiel puts her finger on the core misapprehension (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):
If 9/11 can be reduced to being Washington's fault, the irrational hate and destruction becomes almost manageable. Change administrations, and the Islamists will go away. Such a seductive, comforting thought echoes in most political battles and elections today. The wind from the east blows gritty grains of fear and delusion into the West's eyes. One wonders apprehensively, which way the zeitgeist of this new millennium will turn. Worse, one fears the calamity that will really turn it hasn't happened yet.
Clarke is relevant because this administration was incompetent before 9/11, then hoodwinked us into invading Iraq (against almost all world opinion). Clarke is relevant because he points out that the invasion of Iraq (akin to invading Mexico after Pearl Harbor) has served to vastly increase hatred of the US in the arab world.
In my opinion this administration did a poor job before and after 9/11, and its record regarding these events should be made fully open and public so that each voter can decide for themselves. Especially since the administration uses its response to 9/11 as its biggest self-promotion in its campaign. Talk about a disgrace.
completely agree alqaeda should have stayed the focus after the taliban fell
the metaphor likening the iraq invasion to an invasion of mexico after pearl harbor is ludicrous at best and probably subject to failure if used in an answer on a 4th grader's test about american history (that is if 4th graders are still taught american history). a more apt metaphor would be the invasion of sicily during ww2. the world is a chessboard and the pieces are in motion. one does not necessarily win a chess match by checkmating the king right off the bat. many times, the game is won after pieces are captured. iraq is really a small matter when compared against the backdrop of what is really happening.
these arguments also ignore what the world would look like with saddam still in place. how cooperative would other arab street regimes be with us if he was still around? certainly less than they are now. pakistan may even still be hesitant instead of fighting. iraq changed the strategy of the global war to our advantage and has knocked the jihad strategy on its heels. ultimately, it would probably be easier for the jihadists to conquer saudi arabia and pakistan if saddam were still in place causing much difficulty in the region. perhaps, the arab street would have disintegrated into a large-scale muslim civil war -- which would likely spread and cause the whole planet to fight a worldwide conflict. this may still happen. at least the butcher of baghdad has been neutralized. it is better to take enemies off the battlefield than to leave them on due to some specious intellectual trendiness that is long on criticism and short on answers.
The Barbara Amiel piece is a particularly good (if this was deliderate) piece of anti dhimmitude by the Telegraph. They put her article on the opinion page which directly faces the letters page, thus forcing some context on the letters bleating on about 'how could George Carey have criticised poor little islam which never does anything wrong and if it does it is actually Israel or the Wests fault.'
Among the letters complaining about Carey was one from a Chris Doyle of the Council for Arab-British understanding. I investigated their web site and i was amazed to discover that it did not attempt to promote British values to Arabs, but only Arab/muslim values to the British. Actually I'm not surprised. It just seems to be another 'religion of peace', 'western science would be nothing without islam' apologists site. They have lots of 'educational resources' with the usual bloodless version of the life of Mohommad. It includes a hilarious understatement. "it seems he was no ascetic" regarding his lifestyle.
Their campaign page shows the sites ethos. They seem very pleased with themselves over Kilroy-Silks resignation, and I think they believe they can get somewhere with the Carey attacks. Another letter in the Telegraph says Carey is just another Kilroy-Silk.
There is one redeeming aspect to the site. It encourages it's readership to pester all and sundry to promote their agenda, and so it has a whole page of useful addresses that we can use instead.
http://www.caabu.org/campaigns/right_to_reply.html
c_dub.
'all for what?'
Well I think it's good for the world if mass murderers get kicked out of power now and then. The mass graves in Iraq that are Saddams doing outweigh any talk of intelligence mistakes over WMDs. That said, it's going to be a fraught time there for the next few years, (decades?), and it will be many years before we now whether the investment in time, money and lives will indeed be worth while.
As for short term gains; does nobody else think Gaddafi at least saying he will get rid of his WMDs is a direct consequence of the Iraq conflict.
Clarke is simply playing politics. He is in bed with the Dems.
Bush's team was in office for only a few months. You do not change things that fast, it takes time for new policys to be implemented.
Post 911,
Bush made real changes and is actively hunting down the terrorists.
As for Iraq: it takes a nation state to develop weapons of Mass Destruction. I do not know what they had there prior to the war, but guess what? They will not be doing it in Iraq now!
Two points:
1. About 9/11, there is more than enough blame to go around. And participants seem to be more interested in "face time" before the cameras than fixing what went wrong.
2. The Muslim world doesn't so much object to the removal of Saddam, as it does to how easy we made it look. It generated lots of embarrassment and feelings of inferiority. Both are on going threads in letters to the editor in the Arab News.
jay
Well we sure don`t want the rest of the world to be mad at us. This is always the case with the liberal mind set. We should always practice appeasement and then stick our collective heads in the sand and hope the bad guys go away. Never mind that the corrupt Iraqi regime thumbed its nose at the rest of the world and made a laughing stock of the United Nations and ignored over 17 U.N. resolutions against it. Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and Saddam used them on the Kurds in Northern Iraq, killing thousands of innocent civilians, he used them on the Iranians in that 8 year war , he attacked Kuwait and massacred and tortured hundreds of Kuwaitees, Saddam killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. Do you really think the world could go on trusting this ruthless dictator? especially after 9-11. Iraq is the centerpiece of the war on terrorismm based on several demographics- first it has Syria and Jordan on its west and Iran on its eastern border, then you have Saudia Arabia on it southern border. And what is east of Iran -- well its Aghanistan (get the picture) Libya did. The presidents most solemn duty is protect this country from enmies foreign and abroad. Osama Bin laden underestimated Americas resolve though he is still hoping that some do nothing liberal appeasing Democratic gets into office.
Richard Clarke to me is like John Kerry. When Kerry said he thought the threat of terrorism was overblown, I thought to myself "Kerry is either uninformed or a liar".
One needs to go no further than Tenet's CIA report:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/2004/tenet_testimony_03242004.html
The information is there for all Americans to read in order to gain full knowledge of what we are up against.
It's a shame a good chunk of our fellow citizens rely on news reporters who don't even scratch the surface of reality.