Clarke Blasts Bush’s Policy on Terrorism

President Bush’s foreign policy has aided al Qaeda and impeded the war on terrorism, counterterrorism expert Richard A. Clarke told a standing-room only crowd at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum last night.

Clarke, a former security adviser to President Bush, has gained both reverence and notoriety in the last month after publicly criticizing the Bush administration for its failure to prevent the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

He reiterated his arguments last night, strongly condemning the state of national security and warning of the consequences of the war in Iraq.

“We’ve totally destroyed our credibility in the Islamic world and the ability to work with the Islamic world to fight the war on terrorism,” Clarke said.

The forum—entitled “Are We Entering an Age of Terrorism?”—was moderated by Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the KSG.

Clarke, an adjunct lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG), arrived at the forum directly from his graduate-level course, “Post-Cold War Security: Terrorism, Security, and Failed States.”

Clarke spoke calmly and confidently for 75 minutes to a mostly receptive audience. At some points he appeared to be preaching to the choir; nodding heads and murmurs of approval were conspicuous amongst the gathered guests.

“It’s quite clear the president and others feel they have nothing to apologize for,” said Clarke.

“We’ve done more to fuel Islamic terrorism than anything in history,” he also said, adding later, “George Bush has been very good to [Osama] bin Laden’s movement.”

Clarke said that the country is not much safer today than it was before the Sept. 11 attacks.

“We haven’t spent the money on homeland security that we should have spent,” he said. “Are you safer on a train in the U.S. after 9/11? Take the Red Line and find out.”

He warned the United States should be prepared for more terrorist attacks, suggesting that like last month’s Madrid bombings, al Qaeda may strike before the presidential elections. Many believe that the terrorist attacks in Spain were a ploy to sway federal elections.

Asked by Allison about President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney’s upcoming testimony before the 9/11 commission, Clarke recalled a lesson from his high school debating coach. Clarke, who grew up in Cambridge and Boston, attended Boston Latin School.

“Never deny the obvious,” Clarke said his coach told him. “It is a piece of advice the people going before the 9/11 commission—and those who are going together—might want to bear in mind,” he said, referring to Bush and Cheney’s plans to joint testify.

Though the focus of the talk stayed mostly on Clarke’s criticisms of the administration, possible solutions also came up.

The United States needs “prominent, articulate Islamic leaders we could look to for counterweights,” Clarke said. “We have to get inside the head of the enemy.”

Harvard Republican Club member Ryan M. Delahoyde ’06 called Clarke’s views “overly partisan.”

“He kept mentioning how 9/11 was preventable,” Delahoyde said. “He didn’t really delve into anything about Clinton. He just focused on what Bush did wrong.”

“I think Bush has done a lot towards knocking out al Qaeda in Afghanistan and in Iraq. I don’t think terrorists are exactly thriving at this point,” said Delahoyde.

But Andrew J. Frank ’05, president of the Harvard College Democrats, thought Clarke was “very good and very articulate.”

“It gave me hope that there is a real way to deal with the war on terror, and if Democrats are elected in the fall that could come to fruition,” said Frank.

—Staff writer Michael M. Grynbaum can be reached at grynbaum@fas.harvard.edu.