Wolf bane Intrigue

Al Qaeda planned attacks years in advance, inserted sleeper cells, did reconnaissance. They took the long view, believing that their struggle would take decades, perhaps generations. -- Richard A Clarke, page 227

I cannot recall all of Clarke's testimony before Congress after 9/11, but I remember his demeanor, how it had a manichean aspect. He was very briefly a real American policy maverick, and his policy wonkish book was the first of its kind for me. I purchased the hardback seeking reassurance after the terrorist attack, and finished Against All Enemies in the hospital before my graft surgery, a period during which I often wept conspicuously, and the ward nurse guilt tripped mio padre and immediate family members into paying me a visit. I wanted to go home, then, as now, I want to go home. Mother's side of the familial would tell you that my longing to restore my sense of place and identity is my fault, and it is; they wanted me to move back in with mother before she dropped dead, so that I could relive all my sexual assaults, and I broke off my wedding engagement just weeks before the non-event, and apparently all I live for now is the fucking blog post, alternately violating my own internal decency and then reigning myself in.

Clarke is a competent assessor, but he wrote nothing I did not already know through my assiduous reading of  the papers, or viewing PBS, reading The Boston Review. Last week I wondered where the title had gotten to, but did not panic over its absence. I may have given it away years ago, perhaps to the little whodonnit bookstore on my Chestnut Street corner. Though faded into the pundit netherworld, Richard Clarke did not have to violate national security to bite back the Bush Administration where it counted and get his point across. Looking at Edward Snowden's actions in this light lends itself to being fearful of young white men's paranoia, despite my own bigoted sizzling, displacement, rage at defeat.

Yet the maw this strange young man opened, if not racist, then at least a wound with a stink about the fact that we have a choc-mix centrist left administration in place, is a complex issue, as well as a perplexing event. Americans have to be be able to trust themselves in order to remain a superpower, and the government has to be hard on such people if it is to be able to function, and yet it bewilders sense, what young men like Bradley Manning (though a rage riddled homosexual) and Snowden have thrown away and forsaken, breaching patriotism in real world terms. Does Edward truly believe he will be able to thrive in Ecuador? 

My alienation from the disability *conspirators* I was once in league with is not so draconian, not quite. I was always a writer first, but the game of spy-craft and the nature of intelligence and national interest is a labyrinth that mirrors psychopathy, the zeal of ideology driven a league too far. Literature and Hollywood have thrived on it since both have been in existence.

In the burrowing for my epigram, however, Clarke's evaluation recalls that I have to be true to my own sense of justice, however beaten I may be, whatever length of time it takes. If I cannot finish my protest missive today, I have to remember that I did get a draft off last year, without realizing that Babette Josephs political career had nearly concluded. Staying abreast of office holders is useful.