With a thirty-year career in national security, involving ten years in the White House, Richard Clarke brings a remarkably extensive perspective on the United States’ struggles to battle terrorism both on the home front and abroad. Clarke discusses how he, like other government employees, made the oath and swore to protect the nation, “against all enemies” (). With this preface, he leads into the essence of the book. Following the ending of his career in Washington, Clarke wrote Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror in 2004. The purpose of this book was to describe to readers the history of America’s counterterrorism labors and for Clarke to support his assessments of how numerous administrations’ efforts have flourished and miscarried. Clarke published this book in order to set the record straight on national security matters that seemed to generally cause confusion among fellow citizens. Clarke’s intentions were to inform the average citizen of the inner workings of United States’ counterterrorism efforts. Clarke successfully does so by eloquently establishing his credibility on the subject and describing firsthand experience. This, however, is not to say that this book is flawless. There are areas which could use much improvement. Initially, Clarke explains that in the 1980s the Cold War basically subjugated the United States’ foreign policy. …show more content…
Afghanistan had been invaded by the Soviet Union and the Iranian Revolution, led by Ayatollah Khomeini and other Muslim clerics, had just overthrown the military dictatorship led by Reza Shah Pahlevi, taking United States embassy staff in Tehran hostage. In that same year, Iraq, under the new leadership of dictator, Saddam Hussein, invaded Iran. The hostages were released in 1982, moderately fitting to the Iran-Contra program, which exchanged weapons for the hostages. Reagan, in 1983, sent United States troops into Lebanon and then had them leave for Grenada after the bombing of Marine barracks in Beirut. Reagan, later, sent weapons onto Afghanistan. Which, within weeks of receiving, the mujahedeen and their Arab supporters started firing at Soviet aircrafts. This lead for Arabia’s Secret Service, Prince Turki al-Faisal, to request that Usama bin Laden systematize a Saudi response to the Soviet’s invasion. The book then continues, taking about the Red Army’s self-confessed defeat and bin Laden’s victorious return to Saudi Arabia in 1989. Due to his success, the prince then asked bin Laden to organize a faith-based resistance group to the communist government of South Yemen, and the action was consistent with the Wahhabi denomination of Islam. Bin Laden then placed his veteran troops elsewhere. This lead to 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait. The United States lead a multinational coalition and then financed the Saudi royals, liberated Kuwait, and pushed Saddam’s forces back. In 1991, bin Laden publicly disagreed and criticized the king’s choice to allow the United States to put troops on Saudi’s grounds. This caused bin Laden to be stripped of his citizenship. He then accepted an invitation by the Sudanese government to move into Khartoum. These events, however, are not very well known due to them being overshadowed by the downfall of the Cold War at the end of the year. This situation, conversely, is what put bin Laden on the CIA’s radar. After denouncing his king, bin Laden began to appear in intelligence reports as a “terrorist financer” (). It wasn’t until after bin Laden good-naturedly left his Sudanese alliance, eagerly welcomed by Afghanistan’s Taliban government, around 1996, that Clarke began to hear of a group that called itself “al Qaeda”. This group had been formed in 1990 by bin Laden out of paranoia after the first Gulf War. Ramzi Yousef, a member of al Qaeda, had entered the