Comedian Lewis Black has a great bit about how Democrats and Republicans consistently present opposing “facts” on the same issues. Black’s demand that “there have to be some FACT facts” illustrates the subjectivity that exists in every speech, interview, and article (including this one). Nowhere is this more evident than the innumerable rants and raves about the War on Terror. How does one peel back the partisan rhetoric and figure out what’s really going on?
Michael Scheuer’s latest book, Marching Toward Hell: America And Islam After Iraq, is a good place to start. In this relatively short but provocative follow-up to Imperial Hubris (2004) and Through Our Enemies Eyes (2006), Scheuer continues his exploration of American policy makers’ misunderstanding and mishandling of radical Islam. As a former CIA Directorate of Operations and founder of the Agency’s bin Laden unit, the author contends that American troubles with the Muslim world are largely, if not wholly, derivative of missteps and misconceptions among America’s “bipartisan governing elite.”
However, unlike so many of the liberal voices shouting down the War on Terror for politically correct reasons, “Marching” advances a strict and aggressive adherence to national interest. With a detached philosophical approach worthy of Machiavelli, whom the author cites liberally along with George Washington and other luminaries, Scheuer argues that specific U.S. policy decisions from 1973 to present demonstrate an inexplicable tendency to supplant vital American interests with ill-advised interventions. Scheuer challenges the elite governing class’s condescending appeals to diplomatic complexity and the “ballet of international affairs” as excuses for timid, mediocre, and failed policies.
Chief among these failures, the author names both the elites’ indifference to lessons of history and their arrogant insistence that bin Laden’s jihad is based on a desire to destroy American’s way of life. On the later point, Scheuer uses the precise words of bin Laden and others to highlight the specific clarity with which radical Islamists have pinned their grievances on U.S. foreign policy and nothing else. Additionally, the author cites reputable polls (Pew, Gallup, BBC) that show, though enormous majorities of Muslims express hatred for U.S. foreign policy, virtually the same numbers maintain admiration for American endeavors at political and social equality, generosity after natural disasters, and the ability of parents to find work, housing, education, and health care for their children. Therefore, it is ill-advised U.S. policy alone, the author argues, that has become “the only indispensable ally of bin Laden and the Islamists.”
On the whole, Marching offers an arresting opportunity to pull back from the myopic political spin of the day and review American purposes afresh. Appealing frequently to the Founding Fathers, Scheuer asks the reader to reevaluate American involvements and assumptions that have been the norm since 1945. Critics may point out that at times Scheuer has the tone of a disgruntled and unheeded operative. But assuming the veracity of his assertions (roughly a third of the book is dedicated to endnotes) you can’t blame him for being upset. His claims show gross neglect among representatives entrusted with American life and liberty.
While the author’s clear-cut views tend to place issues in a false vacuum, Scheuer’s unwillingness to fall inline with generally accepted and politically correct outlooks hardly preclude his being right. Facts, like anything worthwhile, require work. The question is, who is willing to take the time and do the digging. One may not ultimately agree with all of the author’s arguments but this book asks provocative questions worthy of thoughtful evaluation. Marching is a solid step toward peeling away the spin, rethinking basic principles, and getting to the FACT facts.
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1 Joe Boudreault // May 1, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Scheuer is a former CIA analyst and in previous books (Through Our Enemies’ Eyes; Imperial Hubris) he proposed that America is on the wrong path in its foreign policies throughout the world. He identifies the problem (not a strong enough response to 911) and then, sadly, goes on to spread the blame for it in all of the wrong places. Here, he castigates his government for the way it conducts itself in Muslim countries in particular. Scheuer takes up his banner against what he calls “the governing elite” of Washington, and more or less blames them all for the troubles surrounding Islamist terrorism and the military policies being practiced in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is not alone in this blame-game; much of the US citizenry practice this public crying game. But Scheuer lays it on so heavy and so one-sided that I am one who hereby accuses him of being an intellectual traitor to his country and to other allies of America. He is too quick off the mark in accusing the USA of intervening where it “doesn’t belong”, and of ignoring the public whims (so he says) of the Muslim world at large. To suggest that you deserve the wrath of terrorists (precisely what 911 was about) is the very soul of blasphemy. But so Scheuer intimates here.
For a CIA expert and self-proclaimed historian in foreign affairs, Scheuer seems to be blissfully ignorant of the real Muslim world, or the world of democracy vs tyranny, or the plain world of everyday Americans and westerners. His repeated show-casing of the Bin Laden complaint seems at times to be nothing short of taking sides with the al-Qaeda factor. Initially, Scheuer exhorts his readers to accept the “truth” that the American leadership has “misunderstood the motivation of Osama bin Laden etc”. He believes that American policy props up Muslim dictators on purpose (ignoring that the alternatives may have been worse), and that the cause of Muslim unrest and terrorism is the invasive US foreign policy he likewise thinks to be intentional. Ie, Scheuer states (p. 205) that “the leaders of both political parties, simply and reflexively repeat that the Islamists hate America and are waging war against it because of our freedoms, liberty, and greater equality, not because of what the U.S. government does in the Islamic world.” Then he continues by claiming that this “is a blatant lie”. Scheuer also insinuates that the American leadership “hates the Muslim world” and is “waging war on it, not on terrorism.” I never knew there was any difference between militant Islam and terror. In this farcical tome, Scheuer never once rebukes the idea, sadly prevalent in the world at large, that America is “an enemy of Islam”. What hogwash! Your own president, Mr Scheuer, clarified the fact that America welcomes Muslims – there are many hundreds of mosques and millions of members of that cult in America, free to believe as they wish, in the kind of peace that only a nation like the USA can offer them. That great fake, Allah, should have such a homeland!
Furthermore, how very strange it is that Scheuer quotes a book by Lawrence Wright (The Looming Tower) in a positive manner but rebukes Wright for his correct analysis of the problem with Islam (the total failure of Arab nations to provide prosperity and equality for their peoples everywhere). Militant Muslims are pissed off because they have been brainwashed into believing that the “decadent Satanist West” is evil and it is now their turn at bat for ruling the world. How did you think, Mr Scheuer, that Islam spread in the first place? By honesty and humility? I think not! (If any culture has conducted interference on the world stage it is the homeland of bin Laden.) To help prove Scheuer’s theory wrong about the “losing of the war in Iraq”, you might also read New York Times author Mike Evans books (ie The Final Move Beyond Iraq) for a very honest and practical disclosure on this same topic.
In another instance, Scheuer claims that Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda cronies are (I quote): “not mad, apocalyptic men, eager to take on the whole world at once.” (p. 198). Pardon me, Mr Scheuer, but that is precisely what those thugs are. It seems that you have had your nose so far up the asses of CIA officialdom that your advice can never be wrong (newsflash: the CIA, not just the White House, has done devious stuff in the past) and presidents and armies can never be right. Read your history again, Mr Scheuer, and you will see that even the much-ballyhooed Palestinian cause is just a cruel proxy war in which the hopelessly-lost Palestinians (representing the militant Muslim world) will never agree to anything short of the fall of the West and of Israel. As a representative of Islam in the Middle East, Palestine is an empire of lies and deceit. Believe me, militant Muslims and all their political hoodlums and imams and theologies cannot be trusted.
Speaking of which, Scheuer actually cannot see the relevance of Israel in relation to the USA. He makes this claim several times. He is totally ignorant of the inestimable value of being an ally of Israel, in every sense. Consider: Scheuer is both a Catholic and a Jesuit-trained disciple, yet he conveniently forgets that God blesses all those who bless the Jews. Hence, I would suggest that he is to Christendom what bin Laden is to Islam, an apostate. He proceeds to claim that (for example) the Israelis conducted an unfair, one-sided slaughter against Lebanon (p.150) when in fact they were doing the very defensive thing that Scheuer thinks the USA should have done in its punitive action into its current war zones. Consider, on pages 196-197, how this author correctly suggests that military might should be severe and intense and unapologetic against all aggressors. Collateral damage be dammed, teach an enemy the harshest of lessons that you possibly can. It is the one point on which I can agree with him. But if it is the Cold War mindset that continues to turn America and the West into appeasers, don’t just blame the leadership or the military establishment alone, as Scheuer does in this book. Blame the citizenry for demanding a clinically clean and fatality-free war.
Scheuer’s “Cost of Our Military Burlesque” portion of his book is perhaps the only honest and brave portion in all of it. Unfortunately, Scheuer keeps beating to death the Cold War mentality theme, over and over and over. Enough, Mr Scheuer! America never lost a war, ever, except where the general public lost its appetite for the cost for freedoms. All western nations know that fully well. Where blame should be placed is not with the Presidency but with the “democratic” anti-war protestors. (George W. Bush correctly said he was a war president when his country needed a war president, and he was equally correct in saying that now we see where “evil men do evil things”). Scheuer thinks that a better understanding of Muslim viewpoints by mainstream Americans might help matters. I wonder what viewpoints he has in mind – the blind and noxious viewpoints of Islam itself? Misfits like bin Laden cannot be trusted for anything. I can easily rebuke this terrorist on every feeble point he makes in his declaration of war against the West. Scheuer basically fails to do this, although he takes occult pleasure in rubbing in the claims of bin Laden, as if they might just be legitimate. Bin Laden is not only an irredeemable murderer, he isn’t even a Muslim (not by my definition), and he has virtually no right to speak for Muslim peoples anywhere, or to conduct his sick jihads for them, especially outside his country of Saudi Arabia. If he did, then the West has every right to fight for democracy and decency anywhere. The West is at war with extremism, and you, Mr Scheuer, preach appeasement with evil. Shame!
You can’t have it both ways, Mr Terrorist, and neither can you, Mr Scheuer. The murdered Muslims bin Laden speaks about were/are victims of other Muslims. His hypocrisy in demanding that “infidels” get out of Muslim countries is proof positive of the drastic intolerance of that cult, Islam. How dare he (or anyone else, including true Muslims) demand anything like that, while he trots around the planet killing and destroying in the name of the big turd Allah. Every Koranic doctrine and Arab doctrine preaches the annihilation of “infidels and Jews”. If you don’t believe this, Mr Scheuer (and I know you don’t) then go and read the Palestinian constitution again, or the Hamas constitution, or the hate verses in the unholy book of Islam. You should know better than to undermine the sacrifice of your soldiers, leaders, and patriots. Your intent sounds fine here, but your analysis gradually went astray. Evil does not listen to reason, in spite of what you might think. Herein, you love to snatch definite defeat out of the potential jaws of victory, and in doing so you play right into the Islamists hands. No alternative foreign policy would ever please your ilk. Like bin Laden, you would always come up with some limp accusation no matter what the White House tried to do. We know your kind. Nothing, I repeat, nothing, will appease the militant terrorists. Scheuer thinks otherwise, but America (bless her!) allows that dissention. I have to wonder, do you readers look forward to another Michael (Moore, that is) coming forth with a film version of this trash?
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