Friday, 31 December 2004

Michael Scheuer or Anonymous

I’ve been seeing Michael Scheuer, or Anonymous, author of Imperial Hubris, all over the place recently—apparently his resignation from the CIA has released the muzzle somewhat—and I don’t quite know what to make of him. I would venture to say that he’s one of the more inscrutable people in the news these days, with Kerry being in retirement and all.

Depending on who is quoting him—or if he’s doing the writing—he is either opposed to President Bush’s policy in the Middle East or thinks it needs to be ratcheted up; thinks we are losing our soft power or will have to resolve to do more of the dirty work ourselves. He’s referenced in the former capacity in an FT article that could have been written by Brad DeLong:

The self-serving fallacies of the they-hate-us-for-our-freedoms industry have been criticised in recent books from, for example, the former CIA official in charge of pursuing Osama bin Laden, Michael Scheuer (Imperial Hubris), and the Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi (Resurrecting Empire). Both argue it is the policies of the US and its allies that have ignited such rage in the Arab and Muslim world.
He wrote a column for the Washington Times that advocates a unilateral approach to the war on terror that requires a great deal more killing on the part of the U.S.:
Simply put, the thinking that expects others to do our dirty — and very bloody — work should have died with the fall of the Berlin Wall. If America is to win its worldwide battle with Islamist insurgents and terrorists, it will have to do its own dirty work whenever it has a chance to do so, even at the cost of heavier human casualties than we have suffered to date. This is not to say we do not need allies, for we surely do. What we need, however, is a consistently commonsense perspective that sees that no two nations have identical national interests; that no country will ever do all we want; and that to survive we must act with U.S. military and CIA assets whenever a chance arises, even if supporting intelligence is not perfect. This modus operandi will take a steady application of moral courage at a level unseen in Washington for 15 years.

In weighing the foregoing, readers might ask themselves two questions: 1) How can it be that Pakistan’s military has suffered far more casualties than U.S. forces in the war on bin Laden?; and 2) Whatever happened to the “Major 2004 Afghan Spring Offensive” that the Pentagon’s multi-starred general-bureaucrats leaked news of to the media back in January 2004? At least one answer to each question is that our governing elites are still desperate to find others to do our dirty work.

I don’t understand this guy and reading additional articles either by or about him are of no help. The views don’t seem entirely irreconcilable—I’ve always viewed saying that the Islamists “hate our freedom” as shorthand for them being opposed to our values, which they are—and we could stand to disengage from much of the Middle East, though I wouldn’t favor abandoning Israel or Iraq. Anyone care to square this circle?

2 comments:

Any views expressed in these comments are solely those of their authors; they do not reflect the views of the authors of Signifying Nothing, unless attributed to one of us.
[Permalink] 1. Jon Henke wrote @ Sat, 1 Jan 2005, 9:28 am CST:

I’ve noticed something similar. When he first appeared, his Bush-bashing was the toast of the liberal blogosphere. He was hailed as a Truth-Teller.

But a few weeks ago, he wrote an op-ed for (iirc) the LATimes, in which he detailed the ways in which the Clinton administration has failed. ‘Sphere:Left ignored that article completely.

My impression—preliminary as it may be—is that he’s highlighting the problems with past/current approaches, without also highlighting the reasons those approaches were taken.

After all, I could give you quite a few reasons why driving a car is a Very Bad Thing. It’d be quite convincing, too, if you didn’t know there were any upsides to driving a car.

Like many employees who think their bosses “just don’t get it”, I get the impression that he’s a bit too narrowly focused on his own opinions to allow room for contrary data.

 
Imperial Hubris is a very powerful book, but as critical as it is of Bush's handling of the war it is also very tough on the most important nostrums of the Left. Scheuer's prescriptions include substantially more violence against Islamists and a bottomless contempt for historical European allies.

I read both IH and Against all Enemies last summer, and IH is a much better book. It is particularly interesting to compare the two books on Afghanistan—Scheuer believes that we waited unforgiveably long to invade and spent too much time trying to line up allies, and Clarke believes that we were no in hurry and that we should have been more solicitous of NATO, etc. You saw threads of both criticisms in the Kerry campaign this fall (the bit about “allowing bin Laden to escape” was pure Scheuer, and the bit about disrespecting our allies was pure Clarke), but they were actually quite inconsistent.

Clarke and Scheuer are obviously fighting different bureaucratic enemies as well. Clarke is deeply critical of the CIA, particularly its Clandestine Service. Scheuer, not surprisingly, believes that the CIA Clandestine Service and the United States Marines (but pointedly not the other branches) are all that stand between us and oblivion.

Anyway, I think that the Democrats have been reluctant to embrace Scheuer because he has said so many nasty things about them. Their boy is Clarke, who bent over backward to avoid any criticism of either Carter or Clinton in his book, reserving all the snarking for Reagan, Bush 41 and Dubya.

 
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