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.