ClarkCast: Thoughts on 9/11 (and PNAC)
By Wesley Clark
September 11, 2001. Do you remember where you were that fateful morning in America?
Of course. We'll never forget it.
I was on the way to work. I tried to make a telephone call on my cell phone and couldn't get through to someone in New York and was convinced it was my cell phone's failure. I wish it had been.
But now it's five years after September 11th. Did you ever imagine where five years later we might be?
Let's look at the facts. Five years after 9/11 Osama bin Laden is still on the loose. There are two and a half times more terrorists affiliated with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization now than there were in 2001. The incidents of terrorism, inspired or orchestrated or otherwise supported by Osama bin Laden and his faction have increased around the world. Including, still threats directed against the United States of America. Including one broken up only a month or so ago that would have taken down 10 airliners in flight over the North Atlantic.
Meanwhile, the worst people are getting the worst weapons. North Korea, which stalled its nuclear program under the Clinton Administration, has now moved ahead to reprocess its spent uranium fuel, probably has 8 to 10 nuclear weapons as a result.
Iran, is apparently moving to produce highly enriched uranium, as well as, the heavy water required to generate fissile material in another path toward nuclear weapons.
And in Iraq, it was an invasion that didn't have to be made as the Senate study released on the 7th of September acknowledged. There was no linkage between Saddam Hussein and the events of 9/11. And so, having gone unnecessarily to war, we now find ourselves three and a half years later fully engaged - 140,00 American ground troops. Air power in the region. The Army and Marine Corps over-stretched. Iraq sliding into civil war. Effort after effort made to put a government together. The neighbors involved. Threats of disintegration of Iraq. A recruiting ground for Al Qaeda. We're creating more terrorists than we're eliminating.
Could we have possibly imagined five years ago, that we would have done so poorly?
Well the truth is, yes! We did imagine it, because right after 9/11 we saw all the indicators of an administration that was tragically mistaken in the way it approached national security, and mixed national security with politics. Its approach to national security was colored by the "Project for a New American Century" and some prejudices brought in by Administration members from a time far distant in the evolution of the Post-Cold War world. A determination to smash regimes by force in the Middle East. And a determination to strike governments rather than go after terrorists organizations themselves.
