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| "Ten Years Later" - by Richard A. Carke |
| 2005-01-07 |
| Excepted from Jan-Feb Altantic Monthly, full article requires subscription. Richard Clark pontificates to the humble masses in a speech on September 11, 2011. This is a transcript of the Tenth Anniversary 9/11 Lecture Sunday, September 11, 2011 John F. Kennedy School of Government Cambridge, Massachusetts Professor Roger McBride Dean, Honored Guests, It is a great honor to be chosen to give this tenth-anniversary lecture. This year, more than at any other time since the beginning of the war on terror, I think we can see clearly how that war has changed our country. Now that the terror seems finally to have receded somewhat, perhaps we can begin to consider the steps necessary to return the United States to what it was before 9/11. To do so, however, we must be clear about what has happened over the past ten years. Thus tonight I will dwell on the history of the war on terror. Having ignored al-Qaeda until September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush responded to the attack in three ways. First, he ordered an end to the terrorist sanctuary in Afghanistan. For five years thereafter a token U.S. military force assisted the Kabul government in its attempts to rule the warlords and suppress the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Second, he moved to strengthen U.S. domestic law enforcement with the first Patriot Act (a law that civil libertarians would find benign from today's perspective) and the Department of Homeland Security, which in those early years of the war on terror was largely ineffectual.1 Third, Bush ordered the ill-fated invasion and occupation of Iraq, which effectively turned his administration into an active recruiting office for al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups around the world. ...The several years without an attack on U.S. soil lulled some Americans into thinking that the war on terror was taking place only overseas...Then the second wave of al-Qaeda attacks hit America. Since then we have spiraled downward in terms of economic strength, national security, and civil liberties. No one could stand here today, in 2011, and say that America has won the war on terror. To understand how we failed to win, and exactly what has been lost along the way, I want to look at the past seven years in some detail. The Clarke wet dream continues.... |
| Posted by:Captain America |
| #4 How's you CIA Operative wifey, the traitorous, seditious, prefidious, faithless, treasonous Ms Plame? |
| Posted by: .com 2005-01-07 8:31:52 PM |
| #3 No, it's me. Blixie banged in sick. |
| Posted by: Joe Wilson 2005-01-07 8:24:38 PM |
| #2 Who's guarding the Irrelevant Hall of Fame tonight, Richard? Is it Blixie? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2005-01-07 8:18:03 PM |
| #1 |
| Posted by: .com 2005-01-07 8:14:17 PM |