Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror by Michael Scheuer Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror
Book Review: A Window to Our Collective Futures
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an extremely well reseached, well thought through, and well written book. Unfortunately it does not convey very good news for those of us who wish a better furture for our children, grandchildren, and possibly our great grandchildren. In case you aren't familar with the word, "hubris" means excessive arrogance due to pride. The book makes an irrefutable case for the old axiom, "pride goeth before the fall." The book was published in 2004 and as of today 03/20/2006 it's predictions are spot on. Read the book and you'll understand why so many Americans are being killed (I'm projecting a little into the future). I certainly hope you and I aren't among those U.S. citizens who will "pay the piper" for trusting leaders unworthy of trust; then again doing nothing about it when we discover what they did makes us accessory and therefore guilty. Those reading this review or the book in the years after 2008 will be totally astounded at the author's perceptive and predicting abilities. Having a bit of knowledge relating to world history and Islam will help the reader of this excellent work.Book Review: Informative textbook
Summary: 3 Stars
Although I appreciated the perspective that Mr. Scheuer provided, I found his work to be more of an extended lecture. He went too far qualifying his points which diminished the message, albeit an important one. I would have enjoyed a more abridged version of his viewpoint.Book Review: A wake-up call for TV watchers waiting for the marines to exterminate the last terrorist.
Summary: 5 Stars
Reading this book will probably leave you feeling offended no matter what you already think. The author is arrogant, abrasive, and redundant. He seems unable to make his point and move on without pounding it home a dozen times more. He seems to have rigid categories in mind for elastic concepts (like the fluid continuum of xenophobic murder, terrorism, insurgency, & guerilla warfare) and contemptuously dismisses anyone whose definitions differ from his own. He's so immersed in the muslim mindset that more often than not he writes like Osama's personal publicist. I found myself rationing my reading to digest his points without getting indigestion.
That said, I enthusiastically recommend this book to anybody with enough free brain cells to deal with the disturbing views this angry messenger brings. Like him or not, he's very well-educated, intelligent, original, unconstrained by Political Correctness, and unafraid to offer shockingly bold alternatives. (If he sometimes writes like a Jihadi syncophant, wait till you read his proposals for fighting them!) He's mostly focused on revealing the unsweetened truths that lie beneath saccharine worldview promoted by TV jounalism and our State Dept. He wants us to see this conflict as our enemy does. And that perspective is a lot further from ours than most of us realize. Since I finished the book several months ago, hardly a day of news has passed that has not confirmed the author's views and revealed the casual--almost willful--ignorance of the Bush administration. (Just recently, "W" implied on Pakistani soil that Pakistanis are arabs.)
For instance, the idea that the West desires to extinguish Islam may be preposterous to westerners, but according to Mike Scheuer it's nearly universally believed by Muslims. The endless rioting and calls for global revenge over the Muhammad cartoons are only the latest demonstration of this unshakeable conviction. (This makes a pessimistic kind of logic: In Islamic culture the study of psychology is an inherently blasphemous challenge to the Will of Allah, and a mind steeped in tribalism is even less likely to consider others' perspectives.)
The author's numerous theses are listed in many excellent reviews already. I won't repeat them. I offer the undecided buyer this advice: this book won't make you comfortable or happy--even if you're thick-skinned enough to endure an often irritating author and courageous enough to confront unpleasant realities head-on. But it will definitely make you smarter--even if you disagree with every word. And it will give you a very good nose for evaluating the next public statement you hear about the Middle East.
Book Review: 2 for trying
Summary: 2 Stars
The real problem of our time isn't what a terrorist believes, it's what he or she is capable of doing. A band of a few hundred or thousand terrorists can keep the entire world hostage if they are determined enough to seek, procure and use biological or nuclear WMD. Their justifications don't matter that much at all.
This book argues that Al Quaeda's justifications somehow do matter; that they seeks to kills us (the west) for what we do instead of for what we believe in. Understanding what a group of murderous zealots may or may not be motivated by is important only because in understanding them we can more easily attempt to inhibit them. But the author insists it does matter for determining policy alternatives and he goes on to suggest that if we can't destroy Al Quaeda in al all out war we should consider trading in Israel's security and handing over the Arab world to Islamist instead of to Nationalist usurpers.
The problem with the arguments in this book is that they're too emotional; at many times one feels here is someone who is upset with the direction the war on terror has taken and feels his (minority) viewpoint within the CIA has been ignored, he has a 20 year long grump to express. He admits that his editor felt obliged to edit out many of the cynical barbs and yet plenty remain.
Some of the points raised in this book are a stretch. Bin Laden's targets (The Great Satan and Israel) are dramatic abstractions to ordinary Muslims. The idea that it is justifiable to kill nonbelievers because they happen to be from Israel or the US (or Denmark for that matter) is not widely held at all. The author argues that vast numbers of Muslims are siding with Bin Laden's Jihad because it is their Muslim duty to protect the holy places from the infidels. That is nuts. The bible calls for Christians to stone the adulterers too, doesn't mean that any Christian in their right mind is actually going to do so. The author doesn't seem to have any feeling with 'reality' or 'the Muslim street'. His extremist notions are dangerous, if we were to wage the all out war vs Muslim extremism that he suggests we'd be seeing a revolution in Pakistan that could and probably would arm the faithful with nukes.
He suggests two such nutty extremist alternatives: declare an all out war on islamic fundamentalism or seek a Munich-like compromise. But the war hasn't been lost; in Afghanistan the coalition has denied Al Quaeda their primary base of operations. In Iraq the whole Muslim world watched in perplexity and often delight as the Great Satan organized the first free elections there ever. While it's too early to claim the coalition is winning the war on terror, it certainly isn't being lost.
The author's compromise alternative isn't realistic either. Western support for Israel isn't a tactical decision, it has always been about protecting the Jews against forces that seek their extinction; one cannot disregard what happened in 1948 and how bad the 650.000 Palestinian Arab and how good the 850.000 Jewish Arab refugees were treated by their own people. One has to realize that the only Arabs that have democratic rights in the Middle East are the Israeli Arabs. One has to take into account how Arab regimes treat dissent (Hama, Syria, 1982) compared to how Israel handles it. Support for Israel in the west isn't a result of excellent Israeli propaganda, it's there for the same reason that the US maintained troops in Europe after WWII; it is supranational solidarity between those who hold similar values. Only armchair philosophers like the author are too jaded to see the validity of that argument.
One can picture the author sitting as a grumpy analyst at a CIA conference table, bitterly contesting the majority view. He himself admits he's not a hands on type of person, his views are scholarly and not very well honed by personal experience. That's obvious from this book. It's a bestseller only by virtue of making the Bush administration look incompetent.
The Bush administration doesn't need any help there. Some of the criticism is deserved; why go after Iraq? Why suddenly try the kind of social engineering (implant democracy) that conservatives have always decried? Certainly it was brave to try to bring democracy to a people who have suffered so long under various dictatorships and certainly those who understand the gesture (the Kurds) fully appreciate America's intent. But democracy doesn't work when there's no large educated middle class that wants democracy and the rule of law.
We might be loosing the propaganda war for not understanding the romantic appeal of the lone religiously inspired warriors going against the huge a secular empire. Bin Laden is a hero like Che Guevara was one, a romantic with juvenile anti-establisment passions, that's why he's popular. He is winning that battle over the Muslim hearts and minds, and the western world plays right into his hand by trying to present a vast unified goliath force instead of being true to the its diverse, opinionated, free and openly multicultural nature. We can't murder millions to kill a few, we can't sell out our friends.
Book Review: Kafir Harbi
Summary: 5 Stars
Michael Scheuer, The Author Formerly Known As Anonymous, was permitted by his employer to buy 15 minutes of face fame while on company time. His company was The Company. His rabbit warren was probably two or three warrens over from Valerie Plame's. His target was the administration that paid his salary.
Mr. Scheuer bought his brief shining moments with Katie and NPR by having the hubris to write about hubris and imperial-overstretch. Then he was knocked out of the klieg lights by empire-builder Richard Clarke. Go, as they say, figure.
Mr. Scheuer wrote that Osama bin Laden's fatwas could be distilled to about six articles of faith and war, none premised on wanting to kill us just because we're us, but all premised on wanting to kill us because of what we do.
Then he contradicted his own assertion by showing often that bin Laden and his disciples want us dead because of how we pray. Either we don't, or we don't face east as the Prophet prefers, and either way the root problem is us & who we are, infidels. Osama bin Laden sought & received a Koranic dispensation permitting him to kill the Islamist true believers among us while he is doing Allah's work, cleansing America of infidelity. Collaterally damaging a few American Islamists to death while effecting the greater good of incinerating or irradiating their millions of unfaithful American neighbors is a trade-off that computes as a positive-sum game in the holy calculus of Osama's god.
As for bin Laden's declarations of war against what we do, Scheuer suggests that we can easily revert to those sun-stroked days when terrorism was (according to John Kerry) a mere nuisance. All we have to do is do things Osama's way. If Israel can't live without us, if their only option when we silence their Amen Corner is to turn left & keep walking until their yarmulkes float, too bad. If we can't silence our ecologists and do the right thing (drill ANWR) while trading in our Hummers for Yugos & Prius envy, then too bad for us, too.
Mr. Scheuer is wrong or stupid about many things, and is clumsily candid about others. He implies that bin Laden is a Great Man, while carefully saying that he means world-historical great, not Ronald-Reagan great. Bin Laden ravaged & plundered history greatly, as few men have, but he is not admirable except to swelling multitudes of the possessed & dispossessed who think in Koranic centuries, not sit-com minutes.
Still, there is much sanity in this book. It fully & correctly affirms that bin Laden is almost peripheral to the war of which he is the designated center. He's The Enemy, but is now less the enemy personified than the enemy emblematic. Scheuer says or implies, correctly, that even if bin Laden's Ace of Spades is peeled from the Deck of Weasels, and even if we sluff and ruff right down to the 5 or 6 of Clubs, the War goes on because it's not just Al Qaeda War anymore. It's Holy War; Crusades, the Sequel. Bin Laden showed that, for $500,000 and only 19 martyrs, he could get mad and get even. He has inspirited, inspired (breathed into) about 1.3 billion believers who hadn't had a real good day for about 800 years, until 11 September 2001. (Readers of Bernard Lewis probably get the point.)
The author is also correct about the 'internationalizing' of our conflicts. He writes that we're often held hostage by our coalitions as well as our allies such as Israel. I believe he's right about entangling alliances in warfare (see Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden), and is wrong about our 50+ year alliance with a presumptuous little nation that is the only nonpathological culture in its part of the planet.
Below are excerpts or close approximations of passages from Imperial Hubris. These passages, with page numbers from the hard-cover edition, reflect internal contradictions at the vital center of Mr. Scheuer's thesis, but they also demonstrate that he understands a fundamental fact of the world we live in: Even our fundamentalists in the West are immersed in the secular swamp of western culture and may be oblivous to the imperatives of a culture and an eastern faith for which thousands and millions are prepared to kill and die:
Toward the goal of preparing Muslims, bin Laden has repeatedly warned Americans that another al Qaeda attack on the United States is in the offing and that it will be worse than that of 11 September. He also offered US leaders and the American people the chance to convert to Islam, volunteering himself to be their teacher and guide on the path to God's truth. It appears, moreover, that al Qaeda prompted a well-known and respected Saudi scholar to write and publish a treatise that, in religious terms, justifies the use of weapons of mass destruction in the United States. (152)
Bin Laden has accompanied his warnings with specific appeals to the US president and American people to convert to Islam, each time offering to serve as their guide and teacher. He made the appeals in October and November 2002, and thereby addressed the concerns of Muslim critics of the 11 September attacks who criticized al Qaeda for not offering Americans a chance to convert before the assaults, thereby violating God's ruling: "We never punish until we have sent a messenger." In so doing, bin Laden cleared the decks in Islamic terms; he has warned and invited before attacking. "All enemies," the religious scholar James Turner Johnson has written, "by their refusal of the invitation to accept Islam and by their resistance to the Islamic mission, are by definition in a state of rebellion against God and God's Prophet, and hence may be killed ..." (153 - 154)
Bin Laden hates us -- and forgive this repetition -- because of our policies and actions in the Muslim world. His hate is neither blind nor ignorant ... (159)
Even the fine historian Victor Davis Hanson got it wrong when he wrote on 20 September 2001, "These terrorists hate us for who we are, not what he have done." (165)
Finally, say our elites, the movement bin Laden symbolizes has nothing to do with the Islamic religion because here in America all religions get along amiably and so the rest of the world can work the same way .... Surely, we have concluded, if we drive and manage an Islamic Reformation that makes Muslims secular like us, all this unfortunate, nonsensical talk about religious war will end and Muslims will be eager to keep God in the same kind of narrow locker in which the West is slowly asphyxiating Him. (166)
None of this had to be; it results from our elites' ignorance of their own and world history, failure to appreciate the power of faith, and disdain for the views and analyses of idiosyncratic Americans and non-Westerners. "Afghanistan is our tar baby and we are stuck fast," Colonel David H. Hackworth wisely concluded. "Too bad the policy-makers who put our soldiers at risk didn't brush up on their Brit/Soviet/Afghan History 101 beforehand." (176
"We have made a slogan of democracy abroad, imagining it as a practical means when it is, in fact, the glorious end of a long and difficult road," Ralph Peters wrote in his invaluable book, Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World. (177)
In defeating these obstacles (to democracy) Americans have been helped -- by great good luck or the kindness of Providence, take your pick -- by residing on a fertile, temperate, and resource-rich continent tucked away from some of the most devastating events on the road to where we stand today. How lucky we are, for example, to have benefited from but not participated in the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, and the hundred years of religious wars they engendered, thereby enabling us to become a nation where men have yet to kill each other en masses over matters of faith. (204)
Only when US leaders stop believing and preaching that bin Laden and his allies are attacking us for what we are and what we think, and instead clearly state that they are attacking us for what we do, can we put aside our ill-advised and hallucinatory crusade for democracy ... (207)
In short, bin Laden and his ilk do not demand Americans become Islamists. (210)
Bernard Lewis: The basic reason for this contempt is what they percieve as the rampant immoratlity and degeneracy of the American way -- contemptible but also dangerous, because of its influence on Muslim societies. What did the Ayatollah Khomeini mean when he repeatedly called America the "Great Satan"? The answer is clear: Satan is not an invader, an imperialist, an exploiter. He is a tempter, a seducer, who, in the words of the Koran, "Whispers in the hearts of men." (211)
Almost simultaniously, the jihad of Afghanistan's Sunni mujahideen began turning the tide of war against the Red Army and Afghan communists, providing a real-world example of the glorious goals militant Muslims could accomplish through warfare waged in God's name and with His help. (228)
"The war is fundamentally religious," bin Laden said in late 2001. "Under no circumstances should we forget this enmity between us and the infidels. For, the enmity is based on creed." The war is being waged against us for specific, quantifiable reasons -- which have been delineated in this study -- and not as our leaders claim because a few Muslim fanatics hate democracy and freedom. This claim belittles the Muslims opposing us -- reducing them th madmen throwing bombs at liberty -- and thereby weakens America's ability to resist by underestimating the brains, patience, and religion-based fortitude of our foes. (249(Only in today's America could the simple statement of fact that much of Islam is fighting us, and more is leaning that way, be labeled discriminatory or racist, a label that kills thought, debate, and, ultimately, Americans. (250)
War is being waged on us because of what we, as a nation, are doing in the Islamic world. Bin Laden's September 1996 declaration of war specifies US actions causing him to incite war. (250)