The Reality We Live In

Judd from Think Progress offers up a blistering response the upcoming ABC docudrama, Path to 9/11, from former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke:

ThinkProgress has obtained a response to this scene from Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar for Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, and now counterterrorism adviser to ABC:

1. Contrary to the movie, no US military or CIA personnel were on the ground in Afghanistan and saw bin Laden.

2. Contrary to the movie, the head of the Northern Alliance, Masood, was no where near the alleged bin Laden camp and did not see UBL.

3. Contrary to the movie, the CIA Director actually said that he could not recommend a strike on the camp because the information was single sourced and we would have no way to know if bin Laden was in the target area by the time a cruise missile hit it.

In short, this scene — which makes the incendiary claim that the Clinton administration passed on a surefire chance to kill or catch bin Laden — never happened. It was completely made up by Nowrasteh.

The actual history is quite different. According to the 9/11 Commission Report (pg. 199), then-CIA Director George Tenet had the authority from President Clinton to kill Bin Laden. Roger Cressy, former NSC director for counterterrorism, has written, “Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda.”

That is what Judd and Richard Clarke have to say.

Decision '08 recalls a quite different and far more true reality by citing the 9/11 Commission Report which states unequivocally that on four separate occasions--Spring 1998, June 1999, December 1999, and August 2000--U.S. National Security Advisor Sandy Burger was "an obstacle to action," preventing strikes that would have perhaps killed Osama bin Laden, decapitating al Qaeda well in advance of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks that killed nearly three thousand innocent people.

Judd at Think Progress and many other liberals would apparently like to pretend that Islamic terrorism was not a threat before George W. Bush was inaugurated. This collective selective amnesia is neither helpful nor realistic. Osama bin Laden was an identified threat well before George W. Bush took office, and his plan to attack on 9/11 is a direct result of watching President Clinton's headlong retreat "redeployment" from Somalia at the behest of the American Left's favorite defeatist, Congressman John Murtha.

William Jefferson Clinton's Presidency spanned 1993-2001. During that time, al Qaeda was suspected to be the inspiration or the cause of a minimum of four separate terrorist attacks against Western targets.

From NPR:

Feb. 26, 1993: A massive bomb explodes in a garage below the World Trade Center in New York City. Six people are killed and more than 1,000 injured in the blast. Analysts cite some links to al Qaeda in the attack, though Osama bin Laden disavowed any connection.

June 25, 1996: A powerful truck bomb explodes outside a U.S. military housing complex near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American servicemen and wounding several hundred people.

Aug. 7, 1998: Two bombs explode within minutes of each other near the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The blasts kill 264 people.

Oct. 12, 2000: Seventeen American sailors are killed and 39 wounded by a bomb aboard a small boat that targets the USS Cole, a U.S. Navy destroyer refueling in Aden, Yemen.

If the Clinton Administration had acted to attack bin Laden during any of the four chances it had between 1998 and 2000, there is the possibility that bin Laden's death could have averted the attacks that killed 264 and wounded thousands in Kenya and Tanzania. Osama bin Laden's death in any of the four possible attacks that Berger stopped may have kept 17 sailors from being killed in Yemen, and 389 other sailors from being wounded. But Clinton's administration did not act, and missed its chances, not just one time, but four.

This is not to place all the blame for 9/11 on Clinton's administration, as every single administration from Nixon and Ford onward to today, both Democrat and Republican, "fed the beast" by not responding decisively and with overwhelming force to terrorist attacks. Clinton was the first president to face al Qaeda, but he was not the first President to fail against terrorism.

George W. Bush's administration inherited 35+ years of bad decision-making which led up to the 9/11/01 attacks, and the ramifications of those 35 years of fundamentally "misunderestimating" the thread continue to ripple forward as terrorist organizations around the world act on the now long-held belief that their zealotry and willingness to die is stronger than our determination to live in freedom.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and of that matter, in Lebanon) have both confused and infuriated the jihadis that are so certain that they can beat the West with outdated weaponry and tenacity, but the simple fact of the matter is that when Western politicians get out of the way and let their militaries fight, western forces have never lost in actions above platoon level in the entire War on Terror. Man-to-man, soldier-to-terrorist, we are quite simply better at killing them than they are killing us.

The reality is that we can and do defeat jihadists when weak-willed politicians let our soldiers fight. It only remains to be seen if the politicians and apologists in free nations will allow us a chance to win.

Update: From time to time, the most recent occupant of the White House shows us that he gets it.