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    Your Government Failed You
    Your Government Failed You
    Your Government Failed You
    Audiobook (abridged)10 hours

    Your Government Failed You

    Written by Richard A. Clarke

    Narrated by Richard A. Clarke

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    ""Your government failed you . . . and I failed you.""

    Richard Clarke's 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 our current leadership—it is a systemic problem, the result of a pattern of incompetence that must be understood, confronted, and prevented.

    In Your Government Failed You, Clarke looks at why these unconscionable failures have continued and how America and the world can succeed against the terrorists. Clarke minces no words in his examination of the breadth and depth of the mediocrity, entropy and collapse endemic in America's national security programs. In order for the United States to stop its string of strategic mistakes, we first need to understand why they happen. Clarke gives us a privileged, if horrifying, inside look into the debacle of the government policies, discovering patterns in the failure and offering ways to stop the cycle once and for all.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateMay 27, 2008
    ISBN9780061632327
    Your Government Failed You
    Author

    Richard A. Clarke

    Richard Clarke was appointed by President Clinton as the first National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counterterrorism in May 1998 and continued in that position under George W. Bush. Until March 2003 he was a career member of the Senior Executive Service, having begun his federal service in 1973 in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, as an analyst on nuclear weapons and European security issues. In the Reagan administration, Mr. Clarke was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence. In the first Bush administration, he was the Assistant Secretary of State for Politico-Military Affairs.

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    Reviews for Your Government Failed You

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      This book takes an uncompromising look at the inability of the government to prevent security and intelligence failures, like those that occurred before 9/11.Prior to the invasion of Iraq, the US Army had no counter-insurgency strategy. Part of the reason was to not resurrect unpleasant memories from Vietnam, and part of the reason was the absolute belief among top officials of the Bush Administration that it would not be needed, that the US troops would be greeted as liberators. It wasn’t until four years into the war that General Petraeus was asked to put together a counter-insurgency strategy.In Iraq, there is a nearly equal number of US troops and civilian contractors. There is a similar ratio between government and private intelligence analysts here in America. The author thinks that should change, now. Analysis should be brought back under government control. Analysts also have no access to public sources of information. Some public bit of information may be all that is needed to, for instance, turn a satellite photo into a photo of secret missile bases.The author also feels that the percentage of ambassadorships and high-level defense and security jobs available to big political contributors and former elected officials should be reduced by a lot; those jobs belong to the professionals. Other countries are better than America at getting human spies on the "inside." That part of the US intelligence business should be downsized, and America should focus on the technical part of intelligence gathering. But, America needs to resist the temptation to launch more and more sophisticated satellites into orbit, when a simpler satellite will do the job.Clarke feels that the next major battleground will be in cyberspace. The current staff of the Office of Management and Budget working on federal IT security is 2 people. That should be increased to more like 200 people, and they should get the clout to force agencies to take proper security precautions.Clarke has spent many years in high government positions, so he knows what he is talking about. Here is a fascinating, and eye-opening, book that will help to explain large parts of recent US foreign policy.
    • 3/5
      Not sure I'd recommend the audio version this book - author reads well, but much of the material is fairly dry, along the lines of a public policy textbook (although the points/suggestions themselves are spot on!). The print version would work better for those tempted to skim, as I was during the first half, dealing with post-Vietnam military policy.