Your Government Failed You:
Breaking the Cycle of National
Security Disasters by Richard A.
Clarke
The Real Deal On National Security
Richard Clarkes dramatic statement to the grieving families during the
9/11 Commission hearings touched a raw nerve across America. Not only
had our government failed to prevent the 2001 terrorist attacks but it has
proven itself, time and again, incapable of handling the majority of our
most crucial national-security issues, from Iraq to Katrina and beyond. This
is not just a temporary failure of any one administration, Mr. Clarke insists,
but rather an endemic problem, the result of a pattern of incompetence that
must be understood, confronted, and prevented.
In Your Government Failed You, Clarke goes far beyond terrorism to
examine the inexcusable chain of recurring U.S. government disasters and

strategic blunders in recent years. Drawing on his thirty years in the White
House, Pentagon, State Department, and intelligence community, Clarke
gives us a privileged, if gravely troubling, look into the debacle of
government policies, discovering patterns in the failures and offering ways
to halt the catastrophic cycle once and for all.
Personal Review: Your Government Failed You: Breaking the
Cycle of National Security Disasters by Richard A. Clarke
Title: Your Government Failed You: Breaking the Cycle of National
Security Disasters
Author: Richard A. Clarke
Rating: *****
Tags: non-fiction, terrorism, national security, military, cybersecurity,
energy, civil service
Excellent, wide-ranging view of U.S. national security from someone who
spent thirty years in government on these issues, working with the military,
intelligence agencies, and the other departments working on national
security topics. He takes a snapshot of the state of national security as of
the early part of 2008, explains how we got to where we are, and most
importantly, makes recommendations on how to improve it all,
recommendations informed by his experience and the experience of other
professionals.
I find the title rather unfortunate, as it sounds sensationalist and partisan,
and hides the professionalism behind the book. Clarke served under both
Democratic and Republican administrations. He criticized the Bush
administration the most, but one believes he would have criticized them as
harshly if they had been Democrats. It was their partisanship and their
incompetence that he disliked. One interesting statistic he mentions,
speaking of partisanship, is this one: "The number of political appointees
declined by 17 percent in the 1990s but is now up by 33 percent in the last
seven years' [that is, under the Bush administration]. (p. 340). Clarke
believes that the government should have both civil servants and political
appointees, but thinks that there should be far fewer partisan
appointments.
Early in the book, Clarke talks about the military's role in national security.
He has the highest respect for those dedicated individuals who serve in the
military. What he does is explain how, in reaction to Viet Nam, the military
changed radically in hopes of avoiding another poorly planned, unlikely-to-
be-winnable and unpopular war. They believed that without a draft, large
wars would be impossible without calling up Reserve units and that that
would be too unpopular to be considered unless we were a dire situation
like World War II. As we now know, they failed to discourage the Iraq war,
in part because those willing to speak up against it were gotten rid of.

Next Clarke goes into the nation's intelligence services. They include data
intelligence gathering, at which the U.S. excels with its technology,
analysis of the data, and human spying. He says the U.S. is very bad at
spying, in part because spying effectively can require illegal and unethical
actions. He mentions British spies infiltrating the IRA who killed British
citizens in order to be accepted into the group they were penetrating. He
goes in depth into the problems of intelligence gathering. There may be
vast amounts of data, but poor analysis. He mentions in depth the CIA's
irresponsibility in not sharing that two known Al Quaeda operatives were in
the U.S.
Clarke discusses energy, and says that it is an impossible goal to be
energy independent, that no one is.
The chapter on cybersecurity is fascinating. He was involved in the issue
once the government became aware of it in the late 1990s, and traveled
extensively talking to hundreds of people to educate himself on the topic.
He believes that better security systems exist, but that the will to pay for
them isn't there, though that may be changing as the costs of NOT having
better security continues to increase.
As indicated above, Clarke spends a good bit of time discussing staffing
issues, from whether private contractors should be doing national security
work to how to keep the experienced and imaginative people needed.
He sums up the book quite well in the following paragraph:
"As you will have noted throughout this book, I have my views on what a
good government should be doing on specific and important national
security issues in the near term. Two factors shape how I believe we
should approach those issues. First, we need to approach national security
issues at home and abroad within the context of our values. When we
detach ourselves to any degree from the Constitution, civil liberties, and
human rights, we soon find ourselves adrift without a compass, and
engaging in counterproductive activities. Second, the threat of violent
Islamist extremists is significant, and we can do a much better job of
countering it, but it is not an existential threat to the United States and we
will do a much better job of addressing it if we put it into context and do not
artificially inflate the threat". (p. 356)
Throughout the book he does make recommendations on bettering the
national security apparatus, and I hope the Obama administration is taking
detailed notes. The biggest lack in the book is not having a bibliography.
There is a good notes section and an index, but he mentions several
notable books and having a bibliography would have made things easier.
As it was, I ordered about four of the books he mentioned for my Library's
collection.

Excellent work, incredibly informative on the one government activity that
is the most important to its citizens.
Publication Ecco (2008), Edition: 1, Hardcover, 416 pages
Publication date 2008
ISBN 0061474622 / 9780061474620
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