Your Government Failed You: Breaking the Cycle of National Security Disasters

New president Obama needs to read this book. After 31 years in government i finally found someone who tells it like it is. That person is Richard Clarke. He has insights that i have known for years but never been able to confirm about some political appointees and their cronies. He also knows the career civil servant well. Washington is a place full of deceit and executive criminal behavior. Reading this book is excellent perparation for that duty. If you want to know what works in national security policy and what does not then read this book. Mr Clarke's blind spot is that he was never in the military. Other than that i find him on target in every aspect of his comments.

Two things I like about Clarke's writing: First, Clarke is a really smart guy, and this is a smart book. It's not unfathomable by any means, but anyone looking for "National Security for Dummies" will want to avoid this book. It has depth. Second, in a country where everything seems tainted with partisan vitriol, with conservatives and liberals throwing real and imagined barbs at each other constantly on the cable talk shows, Clarke is a true bi-partisan. Make no mistake, he is harder on the administration of Bush II than on either Clinton or Bush I, but that isn't because he is a liberal (he's not), but rather because anyone with half a brain can see that G.W. Bush has done more to screw things up than either his dad or Clinton did. Bush the elder and Bill Clinton take blame for their shortcomings in this book as well. No, Clarke has bigger fish to fry than partisan sniping. He has served in several presidential administrations, had a close relationship with several Secretaries of State and Joint Chiefs of Staff, and has seen the good, the bad and the ugly of both civilian and military leadership in this country. This book doesn't just enumerate the problems: it offers solutions. After reading this book and "Against All Enemies", my greatest hope is that President Obama will appoint Clarke--and he will accept--a position high in the administration such as Secretary of State so that, once again, this country can benefit from the wisdom and experience of Richard Clarke, the only man to stand up after the 9/11 attacks, look at the surviving family members of the victims, and say the difficult words: "Your Government failed you--I failed you". We need more of that type of stand-up person in American government. This is a very enlightening book.

Richard A. Clarke has spent thirty years (1973-2003) within the U.S. National Security System and this book represents his assessment of the health of that system today. In Clark's view this system has three integrated institutional components: 1) the U.S. Military (Armed Forces plus the Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD)); 2) The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) (and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)); and 3) The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as a concept as well as an institution.. And he believes the system incorporates three issues: 1) Energy (petroleum dependence and Global Warming); 2) Terrorism (including the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT)); and 3) the Information Infrastructure (cyber-security). In this book he analyzes each of the institutions and issues, identifies what he believes are points of failure in each, and offers a prescription for mitigating or eliminating those points. There is little doubt that Clarke has indeed identified some of the weak spots within the National Security system. His solutions are rather more controversial, but are certainly worth considering. Some of his observations are quite good. For example he makes the point that failure always has a human face. By which he means systems don't fail, the people who design and manage them fail. Which observation is quite true. Unfortunately he proceeds to name names in specific examples of system failures which add an unnecessary element of controversy to an already controversial subject. All in all, this book offers a subjective, but well founded critique or the U.S. National Security System by someone who has served that system in a variety of positions over a thirty year career. No he is not absolutely accurate and objective, but he presents what appears to be a mostly fair and balanced account of what is wrong with national security and how it can be fixed.

With "Your Government Has Failed You", Mr. Clarke has written his fourth book on national security issues. His first bestseller was "Against All Enemies" (2004) was a history of his years as a national security expert for the White House, followed by two novels with terrorism as the plot : "The Scorpion's Gate" (2005) and "Breakpoint" (2007). As his new title indicates, the intelligence system is not working. He is highly critical of the Bush Adminsistration for their handling of the the Iraq and Afghanistan. He critiques the past 8 years of mistakes and is clearly worried about cyberterrorism on the Internet. His writing style is informative but he is not a natural writer. But Mr. Clarke is quite clear that the current system is a failure and a new one must be devised.

America's government spends $1 trillion/year on national security, yet fails to provide security for its citizens. Clarke's latest book reviews several key areas and identifies both problems and potential improvements. The Iraq War is the first topic reviewed. Clarke believes that the war was a major mistake, is not likely to achieve its purpose, and represents a failure in leadership. Examples of the latter include having insufficient troops, a lack of direction after taking Baghdad, poorly equipped and protected forces, loose control of prisoners, and poor treatment of our wounded after arriving back in the U.S. Clarke believes U.S. generals failed to stand up to poor decision-making by civilians, though also contends that top generals were chose for their compliability and admits that speaking out was a career-limiting move. The end of the Cold War came as a surprise to American leadership, and is widely viewed as a devastating indictment of U.S. intelligence. Other failures include the CIA telling Truman in 1950 that China would not invade Korea to fight U.S. forces (that assessment was made after advance Chinese units had already entered North Korea), the CIA asserting that Iraq would not invade Kuwait (did so within hours of that forecast), concluding that Iraq did not have significant nuclear weapons development prior to Gulf War I, stating that Russia had not violated the Biological Weapons Convention (later was proved, and they admitted otherwise), mislocating the location of Russian nuclear warheads in East Germany, concluding that Iraq had WMD prior to Gulf War II and was also training al Qaeda, downplaying the likelihood of North Korea invading the South, India's developing nuclear weapons, failing to detect both the Tet Offensive and the fall of the Shah, etc. Hardly the expected performance for sixteen agencies with tens of thousands and $50 billion/year believed employed in intelligence activities. Clarke is particularly upset at our failure to pursue Khalid al-Midhar (one of the 9/11 crew) in the U.S. even though he had been linked to the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in E. Africa, followed to Malaysia to a terrorist meeting in 1999 (secret photographing of his passport at the time showed he had a visa for U.S. travel, even though he had been identified as al Qaeda both by U.S. and Saudi Arabian sources, and entered the U.S. twice after that and lived in California prior to 9/11. A CIA Inspector General investigation post 9/11 concluded that 60 agents knew of al-Midhar's presence in the U.S., along with an associate. The Afghanistan campaign is a long way from success, also due to inadequate force commitment, compounded by Frank's failure to send U.S. Rangers to cut off bin Laden's escape into Pakistan and others failing to provide enough economic aid. Clarke recommends we stop the heroin growing in Afghanistan (funds the Taliban) by paying farmers to plant something else. As for Homeland Security, Clarke states