Uncertain Trumpet: Imperial Hubris is an alarming book.

Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror, by Anonymous (Brassey's, 352 pp., $27.50)

This is an alarming book, but not in the way its author intended. It delivers an urgent danger signal — not about al-Qaeda, but about intelligence services staffed with analysts who think the way the author of this book thinks.

This latest attack on the Bush administration's war policies was written anonymously by Michael Scheuer, a veteran CIA analyst who headed the Agency's bin Laden unit in the late 1990s. His assessment of the War on Terror is grimly pessimistic: Everything the U.S. has done has been wrong. It was wrong to wait even three weeks before striking Afghanistan, wrong to try to rebuild Afghanistan afterward, wrong to try to cut the funding for terror, wrong to overthrow Saddam, wrong to crack down on radical Islamic groups in this country and worldwide.

As Scheuer sees it, the U.S. is now confronting a global Islamic insurgency under the leadership of the most charismatic and attractive Muslim leader to come along in at least a couple of hundred years. Scheuer dismisses hopeful talk about bin Laden representing only a fringe of a fringe within Islam. Bin Laden's views, he contends, are shared "by a large percentage of the world's Muslims across the political spectrum." America must recognize that "much of Islam is fighting us, and more is leaning that way."

Suppressing so widely backed an insurgency would demand slaughter on an almost unimaginable scale:

If U.S. leaders truly believed that the country is at war with bin Laden and the Islamists, they would dump the terminally adolescent bureaucrats and their threat matrix and tell the voters that war brings repeated and at times grievous defeats as well as victories, and proceed with relentless, brutal, and yes, blood-soaked offensive military actions until we have annihilated the Islamists who threaten us, or so mutilate their forces, supporting populations, and physical infrastructure that they recognize continued war-making on their part is futile.

Scheuer understandably flinches from such massive bloodletting — and indeed, he is not truly contemplating it. He deploys his tough talk only as part of the old bureaucratic trick of generating unacceptable alternatives in order to manipulate policymakers: Well, Mr. Secretary, we have worked up three options for you. Option A is total passivity. Option B is global thermonuclear war. And Option C is . . .

In Scheuer's case, Option C turns out to be a policy of averting terrorism by figuring out what the terrorists want, and then giving it to them. Such a policy of — shall we call it "conciliation"? — is feasible in Scheuer's opinion because Osama bin Laden and his Islamists are guided by defined and indeed "limited" goals:

First, the end of all U.S. aid to Israel, the elimination of the Jewish state, and in its stead the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state. Second, the withdrawal of all U.S. and Western military forces from the Arabian peninsula — a shift of most units from Saudi Arabia to Qatar fools no Muslims and will not cut the mustard — and all Muslim territory. Third, the end of all U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. Fourth, the end of U.S. support for, and acquiescence in, the oppression of Muslims by the Chinese, Russian, Indian, and other governments. Fifth, restoration of full Muslim control over the Islamic world's energy resources and a return to market prices [sic], ending the impoverishment of Muslims caused by oil prices set by Arab regimes to placate the West. Sixth, the replacement of U.S.-protected Muslim regimes that do not govern according to Islam by regimes that do. For bin Laden, only Mullah Omar's Afghanistan met these criteria; other Muslim regimes are candidates for annihilation.

We've all heard this list before; what's new here is a senior U.S. counterterrorism official agreeing that the demands included on it can and should be met. Yet so Scheuer does: "We can either reaffirm current policies, thereby denying their role in creating the hatred bin Laden personifies, or we can examine and debate the reality we face, the threat we must defeat, and then — if deemed necessary — devise policies that better suit U.S. interests."

Scheuer's list of policy changes is headed by a change in policy toward Israel, a country he condemns as a "theocracy in all but name," characterized by "arrogant racism." He also makes it clear that he sees no reason for the U.S. to continue supporting any of its non-European allies against takeover by bin Ladenism: "For our own welfare and survival, we must 'watch others die with equanimity' and help after 'the flames burn themselves out' by focusing our overseas intercourse on trade, sharing knowledge, and donating food and medicine." He is ready to evacuate all "military and naval bases on the Arabian peninsula." And here's how he characterizes the struggles of four other countries victimized by Islamist terror:

Washington has taken measures to enhance its ties to India and simultaneously to coerce Pakistan to halt aid for Muslim Kashmiri insurgents, thereby giving de facto sanction to India's sorry record of abusing its Kashmiri Muslim citizens, as well as its Israel-like refusal to obey long-standing U.N. resolutions. Similarly, Washington has supported and armed the Indonesian military's efforts to smash Islamist separatists on Aceh, advised and participated in Manila's attacks on Moro Islamist groups in Mindanao, and backed the Yemeni regime's drive to keep local Islamists at bay. . . . The point here is not to question whether the governments above are entitled to handle domestic "terrorism" as they see fit — they are — but to ask if the United States is wise to ally itself with regimes whose barbarism has long earned the Muslim world's hatred.

Three of these four countries — India, Indonesia, and the Philippines — are secular democracies under attack from the very same groups that hit the U.S. on 9/11. Yet in every case, Scheuer disdains them — India he labels "unsavory" and "malodorous" — and manifestly sympathizes with their attackers. And his tale is seriously misleading. Manila, for example, only "attacked" the Moro Islamist groups because the latter have launched a campaign of murder against Filipino citizens and foreign visitors. Aceh and Kashmir are more complicated stories, but you would think that Scheuer — who claims expertise in South Asia — would know that those Kashmiri "insurgents" are Qaeda-backed terrorists who nearly succeeded in triggering an Indo-Pakistani nuclear war by opening fire on the Indian Parliament in December 2001, killing nine people. Putting the Kashmiri terrorists out of business is essential to the peace of the region.

Scheuer's habit of seeing every world issue through the lens of Muslim aggrievement leads him into amazing double standards. While he apparently favors independence for the Indonesian province of Aceh, he condemns the U.S. for helping to achieve independence from Indonesia for East Timor, "ignoring the principle of self-determination." How does it violate "self-determination" to grant independence to an ethnically and religiously distinct territory that Indonesia seized by force and where the pro-independence president won 83 percent of the vote in a free and fair election?

It is also telling that in his accounting of U.S. successes and defeats in the War on Terror, Scheuer lists as defeats the bombing of Taliban forces in Afghanistan, the addition of the anti-Chinese Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement to the State Department terror list, a joint U.S.-Indian military exercise in Kashmir, and the Israeli assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yasin. What do all three of these accomplishments have in common? Very simple: They could potentially offend an important section of Muslim opinion. It would seem that the former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit would regard the actual capture of bin Laden as the most catastrophic possible defeat of all.

What distinguishes Scheuer's approach from that of, say, Michael Moore is that Scheuer is not an ignorant activist, but a person charged with informing the nation's leaders about the terrorist threat. It is disturbing, at the least, that a man who had such a large role in defending the nation from Islamic extremism seems to have been mentally captivated by it. I have a strong feeling that Scheuer's 15 minutes of fame have ended already. His book is no longer seen in the shop windows; its ranking on Amazon drops daily. But the spirit of appeasement that produced this book has not, alas, vanished — not from inside the national-security agencies, nor from the larger policy community.

Well, boys and girls, here is a dissenting opinion which I would rather not post because I know it will offend a bunch of my fellow freepers and will prompt a minority who are unfamiliar with my more than 2000 posts, or those who are reflexive supporters of Israel to wax very aggressive and accuse me of every sin from being a Buchanan conservative, an anti-semite, a leftist, or a defeatist. Let me assure you, I am none of these. I want only the best for our country, my children's country, my grandchildrens' country. And I am more conservative and have been one longer than most of you. How many of you have attended a Goldwater rally?

Fasten your seat belts, here is my take on Frum's review of Scheuer:

First, the end of all U.S. aid to Israel, the elimination of the Jewish state, and in its stead the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state.

Second, the withdrawal of all U.S. and Western military forces from the Arabian peninsula — a shift of most units from Saudi Arabia to Qatar fools no Muslims and will not cut the mustard — and all Muslim territory.

Third, the end of all U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Fourth, the end of U.S. support for, and acquiescence in, the oppression of Muslims by the Chinese, Russian, Indian, and other governments.

Fifth, restoration of full Muslim control over the Islamic world's energy resources and a return to market prices [sic], ending the impoverishment of Muslims caused by oil prices set by Arab regimes to placate the West.

Sixth, the replacement of U.S.-protected Muslim regimes that do not govern according to Islam by regimes that do. For bin Laden, only Mullah Omar's Afghanistan met these criteria; other Muslim regimes are candidates for annihilation.

These are the paragraphs which Frum says characterize the principal missteps of American-Muslim policy alleged by author Scheuer in Imperial Hubris together with the steps needed to begin the path toward winning the war. I have separated them for clarity.

My contention is that Frum is primarily motivated by the first, that he disguises this by describing it as one of many objections, and that his objection, from the only point of view which should animate a servant of the nation, is misplaced.

First, a summary of the six mistakes: There are really only four because because the fifth and the sixth are really one since they both have to do with oil. So that leaves our support for Russia, China and etc. (the fourth), our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan (the third) and our support for Israel (the first). In time we will see that there are only three because our involvement in Afganistan and Iraq will be subsumed and finally only two because our support of Russia and China will be shown to be hardly the stuff of war and jihad. Ultimately, we will be down to two and we will see that one is worth waging total world war to the death and one is not worth any American city. Please stay tuned to see which is which.

Let us turn to our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are theaters of active war in the world war against insurgent Islam but Afghanistan at least is not an objective in itself. We are in Afghanistan to destroy the command and control of Al Quaida. Although they might well come back and maybe already have, Al Quaida is long gone from Afghanistan as a governing force.

We are in Iraq to keep WMDs out of their hands, to prevent petro dollars from being used to fund terrorism, especially WMDs, and to maintain the flow of oil from the world's second richest reserve field at reasonable, market prices. President Bush has also articulated a strategic goal of rendering both countries into democracies but this goal is again not an end in itself but a strategy in the war on terror. We can live in peace with a peaceful if autocratic or even theocratic Afghanistan and Iraq.

So, we have an interest in Afghanistan in denying terrorists a base of operations. Apart from that, we do not need to be there. We do not need to wage world war to grant Afghan women the vote. And since we have not found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, we have only an interest that its petro dollars do not again go toward making big bombs. Apart from oil, we could happily leave both places to their own brand of hell.

Conclusion: Subject to the above, let Usama have his way on issue number three. Assuming Iraq has been subsumed into the oil issue, we are now down to three issues.

Let’s consider mistake the Fourth, “ the end of U.S. support for, and acquiescence in, the oppression of Muslims by the Chinese, Russian, Indian, and other governments.” OK, Usama, that’s no skin off our butts, done your way, in exchange of course for an end to the war. We are now down to two issues.

These amount to oil and Mr. Frum’s real concern, support for Israel.

In the end this is all about Scheuer’s ideas. He has said, (note, the quote and the accompanying commentary come from a thoroughly leftist source that you may have the full impression, not that you may conclude that I support or otherwise endorse the source- http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=3705 :

On the question of Israel, Scheuer bravely confronts the "third rail" of American foreign policy, descrying the policy of unconditional support to that country as an albatross of unbearable weight tied 'round our necks, one that could well drag us down into a relentless war against a billion-plus Muslims. Yet all discussion, he notes, of this inexplicable policy, which hurts our national interests, is forbidden:

<(B> "Almost every such speaker is immediately branded anti-Semitic and consigned to the netherworld of American politics, as if concerns about U.S. national security are prima facie void if they involve any questioning of the U.S.-Israel status quo."

The Kerry people may lift his critique of the Afghan war, but were surely horrified by Scheuer's bitterly ironic paean of admiration for

"Israel's diplomats, politicians, intelligence services, U.S.-citizen spies, and the retired senior U.S. officials and wealthy Jewish-American organizations who lobby an always amenable Congress on Israel's behalf."

He sarcastically hails the Israelis and their American supporters who "have succeeded in lacing tight the ropes binding the American Gulliver to the tiny Jewish state and its policies," perceptively noting that this conflation of American and Israeli interests been so successful that, "for many Americans," Israeli nationalism "has become deeply entwined with American nationalism" – to which I would add, only in certain quarters.

Why is Frum so adamant on the question of Israel? Israel has no oil but it has marvelous human assets. I suggest that we cut this Gordian knot and solve our problem and make a huge gain: Withdraw all support from Israel but offer every Israeli immediate citizenship and residence in America. Voila, Usama is happy and we profit! We might have just spared Pittsburgh or Seattle the agony of atomic destruction while enriching our commonweal? What a deal.

Now let us turn our attention to the one area of contention which remains and which is not a matter for surrender or appeasement. It is one of the most moral basis upon which any nation can righteously wage war: Oil. As the estimable (and equally admirable) Ann Coulter has remarked, between bon mots, oil is only as much worth fighting for as air. Soon we will be fighting for water as well as oil. All three are commodities worth fighting for and, if necessary, dying for because without any one of them we will surely die. Of three hundred million Americans we would be lucky if ten million were to survive the chaos which followed the catastrophic and abrupt loss of oil. We would freeze. We would starve. We would die like the Irish on the side of the roads during the hunger. We would thirst. We would go mad. We would murder one another.

Ah, you say, we need not fear the total loss of petroleum products but only that they be fairly priced (this is what Scheuer says Usama wants – no reason to believe that he wants to entirely cut off the flow) but I say I would commit the nation to total, unlimited war for national survival before I would give such a man a dagger and expose the national breast to his thrust. Fairly priced? Do you like your job? Your house? Your car? Your kids’ education? Your diet? Your retirement? Your dignity? By God, sir or madam, if you would not fight for oil like a Confederate at the Dunker Church, you are not worthy.

Does not oil put it all in perspective? Oil is worth a world war against 1.3 billion Muslims, but Israel is not. But if we look hard at these issues the matter will almost solve itself and we can retain our cheap oil if Scheuer is right. Let the crazies have their theocracies on their own turf. Give us cheap oil. We could cut that deal. Done.

WHY DOES EVERYONE ON THIS THREAD WANT SCHEUER TO BE WRONG?

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