Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror – Anonymous (Michael Scheuer)

Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror – Anonymous (Michael Scheuer), Brassey’s Inc., 2004, 307 pp. (S) **

Any work published anonymously must naturally be met with a certain amount of skepticism. At least a minimal knowledge of the author helps give the reader some guidance as to where the writer’s views may be coming from. We now know that since the printing of his book, the author has gone public with his identification, his name being Michael Scheuer. His background is as an analyst in the intelligence community, and hence this is the perspective he brings. The main premise of the book, that Al Qaeda and Bin Laden specifically, despise the U.S. for its foreign policy in the Arab world and beyond, not because of who we are and the freedoms we cherish, is essentially on target. “Bin Laden is out to drastically alter U.S. and Western policies toward the Islamic world, not necessarily to destroy America . . . [Bin Laden] is a practical warrior, not an apocalyptic terrorist in search of Armageddon.”(p. xviii) “One of the greatest dangers for Americans in deciding how to confront the Islamist threat lies in continuing to believe – at the urging of senior U.S. leaders – that Muslims hate and attack us for what we are and think, rather than for what we do.”(p. 8) This point is repeated throughout the book, becoming nearly tedious in its redundancy. Perhaps because he is challenging one of the post 9/11/01 mantras that is so oft repeated in White House and Pentagon briefing rooms and is echoed in the corporate mainstream media, it has assumed the status of a near mythical truism of its own accord (that we are hated for who we are), he feels the need for such repetition.

In his preface and introduction, Scheuer begins with some solid statements that show great promise but that he unfortunately abandons later on in his neglect to do adequate follow-up, hence leaving the reader wanting and frustrated. “Persian Gulf oil and the lack of a serious U.S. alternative-energy development are at the core of the Bin Laden issue.”(p. xi) “ . . . [T]hat heads did not roll after 11 September is perhaps our most grievous post-attack error.”(p. xi) “The U.S. invasion of Iraq was not preemption; it was . . . an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat . . .”(p. xvii) So out of the box, he defines the “Bin Laden issue” as inextricably linked to U.S. energy policy. He also makes a passing reference to operation “Vigilant Guardian,” but again, the reader is disappointed by the absence of later follow-up. Later he quotes Graham Allison of the Economist, “‘September the llth demonstrated a level of imagination and sophistication, and audacity previously thought impossible by the American, or any other, government.’”(p. 26) Few dare venture that the 9/11/01 attacks were anything other that the artifice of a man of ill health, many thousands of miles away directing pliable underlings to carry forth his nefarious designs (and those who have and do are in this day of psychological warfare and spineless conformity, or what the author prefers to call “moral cowardice,” can only best be described as near heroic). But when one really considers this scenario – of a single genius pulling off so intricate a plan, it does seem rather absurd on its face. With such a promising beginning to his thesis, one might easily expect to find an analysis of the treatise of the Project for the New American Century in a subsequent chapter, but for the reader there is no such luck. Instead of exploring the domestic depths of possible motives, we are shoveled a full load of hot air, Monday morning quarterbacking by an arm chair, bloodthirsty bureaucrat. For instance, he quotes Brian Jenkins as stating, quite accurately to this reviewer’s mind, that “‘[T]o a large extent Osama Bin Laden is our own creation. The United States encouraged and helped him wage a holy war against the Soviet army in Afghanistan,’” to which Scheuer dismissively puts aside as all so much “cynical and false mantras.”(p. 25) Maybe he’s confused in this matter by his 1980s rose colored glasses when he calls Reagan “[a] great and good man.”(p.192) What part of great and good is there in arming Islamic fundamentalist fanatics and training them to do our dirty work, a U.S. foreign policy habit he deems elsewhere as less than chivalrous and “moral.” Perhaps, in a perverse sense, he is grateful to Reagan era policymakers for helping to ensure he had a job at the CIA’s Bin Laden unit. These are examples of a confused and ambivalent, and dare I say, hubristic, mind. Sometimes he opts to play the fatalist: (i.e. “The reestablishment of an Islamic regime in Kabul is as close to an inevitability as exists.”(p.58), “No one should be surprised when Bin Laden and Al Qaeda detonate a weapon of mass destruction in the United States.”(p.158), “Status quo policy toward Israel will result in unending war with Islam.”(p.257)), while at other times he chooses to prescribe stiff medicine, “Progress [in the war on terror] will be measured by the pace of killing and yes, body counts . . . killing in large numbers is not enough to defeat our Muslim foes. With killing must come a Sherman-like razing of infrastructure.”(p.241) At one point he blurts that all of “Islam is at war with America” which seems tantamount to saying Christianity is at war with Afghanistan, only because Pat Robertson or someone of his ilk, says it’s so. Scheuer seems to have difficulty distinguishing a fringe, fundamentalist sect, from the rest of a mostly peaceful religion. Are we really to believe that a fifth of the world population is at war with us, and to date there has been no follow-up to the 9/11/01 attacks on U.S. soil?

The relevant observations that Scheuer raises are 1) “The pace and lethality of attacks by Al Qaeda and its allies between 11 September 2001 and early 2004 are substantially greater than those during the period of 1999-2001 . . . ”(p.91) and 2) “Does U.S. security require, and have the moral right, to aggressively try to install secular, democratic systems in countries that give no hint of wanting them?”(p.258) The former is a statement of fact reflecting an outgrowth of failed policy, while the latter poses the most pertinent question to an administration that, despite all the failings of current policy, clearly has ambitions beyond Afghanistan and Iraq (namely Syria, Iran, and quite possibly Saudi Arabia). How much simpler and more concise his analysis would have been if from his opening pages, he had simply chosen to follow the oil. Instead, to charge others with “fecklessness” and “moral cowardice” as he pines for a general to fall on his sword for an altruistic, career-ending purpose (do generals Shinseki and Powell ring a bell? – ok, the latter’s resignation came after the publication date, but the examples are nonetheless not hard to find) and to fill his pages with epigraphs attributable to Civil War-era leaders and generals, drawing erroneous parallels to the contemporaneous “war on terror,” when more of a likeness could be better drawn to low-intensity, counter-insurgency conflicts by occupying forces (i.e. 1950s Algeria), all the while using source material that mostly goes back no further than five years, shows deficiencies that betray something more than poor writing skills. Overall, one must eventually ask, why and to what end was this piece written. The answer may have something to do with the author eventually going public, where on 60 Minutes he made a not so subtle, dare we say “hubristic,” endorsement of the policy of “extraordinary rendition” (a policy whereby persons are captured domestically and sent abroad to countries where torture is de rigueur). The title of the book and its general thrust is designed to hook the liberal-minded reader, but by the time you roll around to its final pages, the writer is doing everything but strapping his boots on and affixing his bayonet (of course, when coming at the prompting of a pompous chicken-hawk, that would all have to be taken for the rhetorical). One can only suspect a wider agenda here, and since this is someone from the “intelligence community,” it’s not too far of a jump to call this kind of writing “psychological prepping” in the halls of public opinion, where “opinion-makers” try to mold ideas into more palatable servings. Are we to really begin gearing up for the “holy war” ahead? Is this genuine understanding? Thankfully, there are plenty of other sources on this subject matter that provide more apt questions with clearer answers and more rewarding discourse.