Imperial Hubris. Why the West is losing the war on terror

Michael Scheuer’s book titled “Imperial Hubris. Why the West is losing the war on terror” is an astonishingly well researched book and it is written with a clarity of mind that is sorely lacking among contemporary writers.

Michael Scheuer worked for the CIA for 22 years. During this period, he worked for a number of years as a member of the CIA’s special team tracking Al Qaeda. He resigned from the CIA in 2004 out of growing frustration at the sclerotic and utterly ineffectual culture afflicting America’s intelligence apparatus. There is probably no other writer as knowledgeable on Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden as Michael Scheuer. Which is why ordinary American citizens should be concerned that he no longer works for the CIA.

Scheuer’s book was published on conditions of anonymity and it wasn’t until he resigned from the CIA that people found out who “anonymous” really was. He had also written another book on this subject in 2002 titled, “Through our enemies’ eyes”, which I haven’t read.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in the subject of international terrorism (and if you’re not, the book has a rather chilling message which affects everyone in the US primarily, but also all those nations that have allied themselves with America). The central thesis of Scheuer’s book is that large majorities of Muslims across the world hate the US with a passion and this hatred is driven by specific US policies and not by abstractions such as “hatred for freedoms”. To back up his case Scheuer takes the best source – the pronouncements of Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders. Scheuer argues persuasively that although every new Bin Laden video is analysed to the minutest detail, the one thing which isn’t analysed with any real interest is what is actually said.

Bin Laden

Scheuer argues that far from being a degenerate or a lunatic or a marginal figure, Bin Laden is by far the most popular figure in the Muslim world today. The fundamental reason for this is that Bin laden has been able to tap into Muslim grievances about specific American policies and Muslim perceptions of them. This has contributed enormously to his success because the message is consistent and repeated over and over again.

Scheuer identifies the following six American policies that enrage the Muslim world:

1. The presence of American soldiers in some of Islam’s holiest places including Saudi Arabia.
2. Support for repressive regimes in the Middle East which oppress their own peoples.
3. Disregard or tacit support for governments that are currently perceived to be repressing Muslim insurgencies around the world – Russia, China, Indonesia, India and the Philippines.
4. Support for Israel (Bin laden states that his final aim is the elimination of Israel).
5. Exploitation of the Muslim world’s natural resources such as its oil reserves by buying the oil at below market prices.
6. US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

He argues that it is irrelevant that Americans understand those policies to be just and not hostile to any religion or religious group, that Americans believe that American foreign policy is well intentioned. He contends (something I have heard few people argue with as much effectiveness) that it is more important for Americans to try and understand how the policies are viewed by the Muslims. Why? Because it is largely in response to those policies that Muslims have begun to heed Bin Laden’s call to arms.

Muslim perception

To the Muslim world, still seeped deep in its faith, the presence of American soldiers in Islam’s holiest places, the support for secular tyrants in some Muslim nations and the invasion of Iraq are seen as proof backing Bin Laden’s call that America (leading a pack of “Crusaders”) has launched a war of conquest against Islam. The Koran contains passages that require Muslims to band together and fight a defensive Jihad against invading infidels. Thus, with the vast majority of Muslims convinced that America is indeed waging such a war (backed by images from Iraq, the West Bank and Gaza, and the sight of American soldiers on the sands of Saudi Arabia), large numbers of young men (a demographic group which is preponderant in the Muslim world given Islamic fertility rates) are heeding Bin Laden’s call because that call is consistent with Koranic doctrine.

The greatest mistake the West makes is in not understanding religious motivation that clearly drives these men. Scheuer argues persuasively that the West’s greatest weakness is that Western elites no longer understand the power of devotion to God and they cannot understand the enormous pull of the call to Jihad. That being the case, the overwhelming majority of military and political elites in the West continue to harbour the delusion that Bin Laden is a fringe figure and the brand of wahabbism he preaches is a cult of the lunatic fringe. Scheuer argues that nothing could be further from the truth. He backs his argument with poll after poll across the Muslim world which shows massive support or sympathy for the defensive Jihad.

Not terrorists

Scheuer argues that the greatest mistake western elites (especially the American elite) are making is in assuming that the usual rationales and strategies that apply to fighting terrorism apply to fighting Al Qaeda because it is just another terrorist organization (although a bit more virulent than the others). Scheuer argues that Al Qaeda is not a terrorist organization but a front that is leading a global Islamic insurgency. The aim of this insurgency is far wider and greater in scope than anything ever encountered by counter terrorism experts till date. Its stretch is absolutely global – facilitated by modern means of communication, the ease with which money transfers can be made and mass immigration which has created sanctuaries for terrorists all over the West (some of the 9-11 hijackers learnt their trade in Hamburg, Germany).

The mistake therefore is in trying to counter Al Qaeda alone and assuming that it would largely deal with the problem of Muslim terrorism. It won’t because Bin Laden’s tactic is not to simply recruit thousands of young men and incorporate them within his network but to incite the broad mass of Muslim youth to take up arms against America and its allies. Therefore, the terrorist threat doesn’t emanate from Al Qaeda alone but from dozens of other organizations that have sprung up recently after heeding Bin Laden’s call to Jihad.

Scheuer argues that it is a fallacy to try to fight Al Qaeda by eliminating “State sponsors” of terrorism because Al Qaeda is appealing to youth in most countries where the existing government is also on the hit list. They do not therefore constitute friends of the existing governments but dangerous insurgents that seek to overthrow them.

Masterful opponent

Another symptom of the lack of understanding in respect of the terrorist threat is the use of labels such as “gangster”, “thug” and “murderer”. Scheuer says that in his years of tracking Bin Laden’s activities and in following his rhetoric, a clear picture of Bin Laden emerges. Far from being a madman, Bin Laden is a remarkably rational and hard headed man who has avoided virtually all of the mistakes that one would expect madmen to commit. Scheuer argues that this makes Bin Laden infinitely more dangerous and it also means that Americans severely underestimate the threat that he and his followers pose.

Scheuer argues that Bin Laden has consistently sent out a coherent and focused message to the Muslim youth, a message that repeats the particular policies that are perceived by Muslims as a part of a project to conquer and enslave the Muslim world. He argues that unlike raving fanatics like Khomeini (and despite assertions by large numbers of media heads, academics and politicians to the contrary), Bin Laden has not wasted time and effort in condemning American Society. While his view of American society as a decadent culture probably does not differ greatly from Khomeini’s, Bin Laden does not waste time talking about it but instead continues to focus on Muslim anger at American policies in the Muslim world.

This perception of “war of conquest against Islam” was reinforced by the war on Iraq. It was a “Christmas present” that Bin Laden could not have hoped for in his wildest dreams. Several Al Qaeda spokesmen have regularly argued that the despotic Middle Eastern regimes do not need to oppose the United States directly but merely loosen national borders and allow Islamic insurgents to travel more easily. This would allow Islamic insurgents to attack American and Western targets with far greater effectiveness and lethality. Predictably, the Iraq War which was supposed to make America safer has had the opposite effect. By destroying the Hussein regime and by failing to seal the borders, it has allowed Islamic fighters who had been waiting for years to wage holy war (against the United States) the golden opportunity to do so. In terms of a tactical mistake, the Iraq war will go down as the worst in a litany of mistakes in the “war on terror”.

But the mistakes did not begin with Iraq. Mistakes were committed before 9-11 and in its immediate aftermath. Bush’s decision to negotiate with the Taliban and then subsequently engage in the most innocuous bombing in the initial stages of the war in Afghanistan allowed the Taliban to escape. The American perception that the Taliban were now cornered and would have no option but to fight and then lose a bloody war against a superior army was mistaken. The Taliban simply dispersed and melted away into Afghanistan’s 30 million people, thus laying the seeds of a future insurgency.

The future

The gathering support for Islamic militancy across the world, the continuing American policies (unchanged since 9-11) and the fact of mushrooming terrorist organizations across the Muslim world mean that the terrorist threat is likely to get infinitely worse with time. Scheuer says that while the US has actually captured a number of known Al Qaeda leaders and killed them, there is no matrix within which to analyse the impact of these successes because no one knows what the breadth and reach of Al Qaeda was before 9-11 and no one yet knows how many cells or how many new fronts have opened up (or even what the leadership profile looks like in its entirety). The result is that the battle against terrorism is being fought with a purely “legalistic” frame of mind, with a sense that the opposition is composed largely of criminals who need to be captured, tried and then incarcerated. This “fighting terrorism by using Lawyers” approach caused the Americans to miss an opportunity to kill Bin Laden about 10 times during the Clinton Administration’s two terms.

Scheuer argues that there is no way out of this war. It is a choice between war and endless war. The way to shorten the duration of this war would be by beginning to reconsider American policies and alternatives to those policies. Unless those policies are altered, the insurgency will keep spreading.

Predictably, any mention of re-considering policy has been met with cries of “anti-Semitism” from the Neoconservative right.  While Scheuer does not argue that support for Israel be withdrawn, he does argue that a debate needs to take place on America’s Israel policy simply because it is a key component of the Bin Laden message of “war against Islam by the Crusaders”.

Conclusion

Scheuer’s book is a valuable contribution in understanding the terrorist threat. But even more so, it is a warning to those swallowing the message from the establishment in America without engaging in critical analysis. While nothing demonstrated the propensity of politicians to lie through their teeth better than Iraq, the lies have not ceased to come because one of the messages sent out by Bush’s election victory is that despite all the lies, a large number of Americans trust him and his advisors completely.

If there are flaws in Scheuer’s book, they are predictable flaws. It appears that Scheuer takes much of the (multiracial character of) immigration policy as largely unalterable (although he has argued in favour of deporting illegal aliens and guarding the borders better).

But immigration is really the engine that drives the terrorist threat in Europe and America. And immigration is largely driven by the poisonous ideology of multiculturalism. It goes without saying that Britain ruled many Arab tribes and had imperial interests in the middle east during the days of empire. But there was no Islamic terrorism in Britain at that time. So while Imperialism (or what is perceived by Muslims as American Imperialism) is a factor, what makes it possible ultimately for suicide bombers, hijackers and mass murderers to kill Americans is the nature of the Multicultural state. Because blocking immigration by ethnic origin is now utterly verboten and because fighting “racism” constitutes the fundamental goal of the multicultural state, the measures that would eliminate terrorism are now impossible to introduce. It is impossible to check Arab Muslim youth more thoroughly at airports and other public places because that would be (gasp!) “racial profiling”.

Also, the huge number of non-white immigrants now settled in the US and Western Europe makes it impossible for the terrorists to stick out because they simply melt away into the broad mass of racial minorities. Therefore, citizen vigilance is virtually impossible. At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, America couldn’t possibly have been attacked so easily by terrorists or Islamic insurgents in another era because they would have never been let into the country or would have been evicted at the point when their visas expired. With borders that tight and the definitions of nationality that strong, an Arab Muslim would cause enough suspicion to send alarm bells ringing wherever he would go.

America is already too racially diverse for the necessary measures to become practicable (unless a massive change in public opinion occurs). And the more diverse it becomes, the easier it will be to target. It is understandable that Scheuer desists from taking his conclusions that far (or perhaps he himself does not believe in the legitimacy of a white America). Having been called an “anti-Semite”, it is conceivable that arguing in favour of ending the multicultural madness would have had him consigned to the bin immediately by the entire establishment (perhaps even finding a publisher for his work would have been impossible). And ultimately, it would destroy the message itself.

Scheuer has done all westerners (not only Americans) a great service by illustrating the nature of the enemy. Without talking about Multiculturalism, Scheuer’s book gives the multicultis a black eye. And he utterly decimates the neocon “spread democracy” argument with a superb aggregation of available evidence.

The naysayers will keep fiddling at the margins and try to discredit him. They will argue that Afghanistan now has a “flourishing” democracy and that Scheuer’s analysis is wrong. They will argue that Scheuer is driven by “Jew-hatred”. They will argue that he sensationalises in order to sell his book. But as the war in Iraq gets worse with every passing minute and American soldiers die at an even greater rate in Afghanistan, the motives behind those allegations are becoming clearer.

UPDATE:

I should have mentioned the most chilling aspect of the terrorist threat - Bin Laden’s pursuit of Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Weapons and his obtaining of a Fatwa from a Saudi cleric that authorises him to use them against the citizens of the United States. This is covered in Scheuer’s excellent book.

Posted by Phil Peterson on Wednesday, May 25, 2005 at 02:56 PM in Books
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