By Michael Scheuer for Information Clearing House
Egyptian president Mohammad Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood were elected a year ago in what the so-called “International Community” judged a free and fair election. They and Egypt’s Salafist movement garnered nearly 65-percent of the vote. On Friday, Egypt’s military intervened in the political arena and overthrew and detained Morsi.
Why? Because those who deservedly and miserably lost to the Islamists in 2012 did not care to wait for the next election to try to defeat Morsi. Those in the West who have contended that some Muslims are not capable of democracy have been proven right, although the proof lies in the behavior of those pro-democracy Egyptians the West praises and supports. Egypt’s Islamists, on the other hand, played by the political game’s rules and—if the military’s diktat holds—they have lost and war is now their main option.
What next in Egypt? After a period of post-coup semi-quiet, I think, the likeliest answer will be escalating violence for the foreseeable future. If the Brotherhood and their Salafist allies cannot hold the power to govern they legitimately won by an overwhelming margin, they will decide quite correctly that it is time to reach for the Kalashnikovs. They will be encouraged to make this decision by the Western-dominated International Community‘s tepid criticism of Morsi’s anti-democratic overthrow, which was made while it loudly applauded the Egyptian army‘s promise of new elections relatively soon.
Egypt’s increasingly popular and bin Laden-like Salafist movement was never happy with the idea of Western-style popular elections nor did they believe the West would tolerate a Sharia government. Still, they put their religious scruples on the backburner and participated in the 2012 vote. To the West’s shock and horror, they finished on the Brotherhood’s heals.
Today the Salafists know that all future Egyptian elections will be rigged against them and the Brotherhood. (NB: Egypt’s coup-against-democracy will be read the same way by Islamists worldwide.) The Salafists will tell Morsi and his colleagues “we told you so” and head for their arsenals, as well as to Egypt’s borders to welcome fellow Salafist fighters coming to their aid from Eastern Libya, elsewhere in Arab-Spring-ed Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia. And all of them will be supported with guns, money, and more volunteer mujahedin from the Sunni states of the Arab Peninsula.
The Brotherhood, on the other hand, is in an impossible situation; it can only opt for war. If Morsi and his lieutenants accept the military’s action and reward the losers of the election the Islamists won in 2012, they may form some kind of illegitimate temporary regime but only at the cost of their political and religious credibility.
In addition, such a blatantly corrupt and anti-democratic compromise will drive large numbers of the Brotherhood’s members—especially its young males, some of whom are in Egypt’s armed forces—into the arms of the Salafists. If this occurs, Egypt will have a civil war with part of the army siding with the Islamists and the other part with the effete, militarily useless pro-democracy forces. In such a scenario, the Egyptian Islamists will win, though, as in Syria, it may take a while.
What should concern Americans most about the near certainty of war in Egypt, and thus the broadening of the mujahedin’s overall war against the West, is whether Obama’s administration—in league with pro-Israel Republican and Democratic senators, Britain, and Israel—used its intelligence services to help the leaders of Egypt’s anti-democratic opposition to organize, fund, and train the democracy-killing forces that filled Cairo’s streets with demonstrations and prompted the Egyptian army to use that most democratic of all tools—a military coup.
Readers will recall that former-Secretary of State Clinton and her diplomatic minions—when they were not getting Americans killed in Benghazi—bank-rolled the intervention of a number of Western NGO-like groups to operate inside Egypt to build a secular, pro-democratic movement meant to overthrow the Islamists. When Morsi and his cabinet identified this violation of Egyptian sovereignty they—like Putin when he found the same U.S.-backed threat in Russia—arrested and jailed Clinton’s agents and then threw them out of the country.
Was that the end of it? Well if Obama, the Senate’s bipartisan Israeli shills, the British, and the Israelis were smart, they would have stopped right there. But events of recent decades suggest they probably just shifted gears and went from overt, NGO-type interventionist activity to covert action interventionist programs conducted by their intelligence services.
As the Western media—and no outlet more flagrantly than the BBC—have been busy cheerleading for Morsi’s removal, I have heard no journalist who has bothered to ask how Egypt’s spectacularly fractured pro-democracy movement—it fielded 17 disunited, feckless presidential candidates in the 2012 election Morsi won—has in a twelve-month become a better organized, better-funded, and more united and logistically effective force. While it is only a guess, my money would be placed on a bet that Obama, Cameron, Netanyahu, McCain, Lieberman, Schumer, and Graham cooperated in devising a covert program that used their long-time friends in the Egyptian army and those Egyptians who this week proved themselves utterly incapable of democracy to invalidate Egypt’s free-and-fair 2012 election.
If this proves to be the case, the composite force of young Egyptians intolerant of the democratic process and Western and Israeli leaders who pretend Muslims do not hate their constant, cavalier interventionism will have ensured that al-Qaeda leader Zawahiri’s 2005 forecast that only jihad can defend Islam and install Sharia rule is accepted as truth by more tens of millions of Muslims. And then we will have to face an ever intensifying, Salafist-led religious war against the West, a war which America will end up fighting overseas and at home.
Michael F. Scheuer is a former CIA intelligence officer, American blogger, historian, foreign policy critic, and political analyst.
Showing posts with label Scheuer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scheuer. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Saturday, September 29, 2007
The bin Laden needle in a haystack
By Michael Scheuer
More than six years after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Osama bin Laden remains free, healthy and safe enough to produce audio and videotapes that dominate the international media at the times of his choosing.
Popular attitudes, and some official ones, in the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies tend to denigrate the efforts made by their military and intelligence services to capture the al-Qaeda chief. The common question always is, "Why can't the US superpower and its allies find one six-foot, five-inch Saudi with an extraordinarily well-known face?"
The answers are several, each is compelling, and together they suggest that the US-led coalition's military and intelligence forces are too over-tasked and spread far too thin to have more than a slim chance of capturing or killing bin Laden and his senior lieutenants.
The first factor is the issue of topography. Few US citizens or Europeans have any idea of what the terrain of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border looks like.
This shortcoming must be attributed to the failure of Western leaders to educate their electorates using the abundant and commercially available satellite photography that depicts the nightmarish mountains, forests and roadless terrain in which Western forces conduct their search. The border area is genuinely a frontier in the sense of the American Old West, but with mountains that dwarf even the Rockies. Such use of satellite photography would likewise show voters that the Western concept of a "border" as a well-defined and manageable demarcation between two nation-states is not remotely applicable regarding the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
The second factor is the role of the indigenous population. Bin Laden and his lieutenants appear to currently reside in a region dominated on both sides of the border by Pashtun tribes. Ethnically and linguistically, the Pashtun are fairly homogenous, but the multiple tribes are divided and subdivided into myriad, often rival, clans. What all Pashtuns share, however, is a quite conservative brand of Islam and a tribal tradition that insists that no individual, once accepted as a guest by the tribe, ever be surrendered to those seeking him and that he be defended to the death.
Buttressing this tribal stricture in bin Laden's case is the fact that the Pashtuns are conservative Muslims, and regard him - as does much of the Muslim world - as an Islamic hero. The strength of this combination is evident when it is noted that no Pashtun has stepped forward to collect a cent of the tens of the millions of dollars the United States is willing to pay for information leading to bin Laden's capture or death.
It also is worth noting that the Pashtun custom of guest protection and their tendency to evaluate bin Laden as an Islamic hero is more or less shared by all Sunni Afghans, that it is a near-countrywide Afghan characteristic. Thus, the US-led coalition's military and intelligence personnel are likely to encounter these attributes along most of the 1,700-kilometer Pakistan-Afghanistan border in areas north and south of the Pashtun-dominated central border area.
In addition, the Afghans' traditional hostility to foreign occupation traverses all ethnic groups and this nearly universal attitude is likely to be encountered with increasing stridency as the coalition's presence progresses through its seventh year. Recent media reporting, for example, shows that some mujahideen groups in the pro-Karzai Northern Alliance's heartland are beginning to reform on the basis of a desire to rid Afghanistan of what they view as its current set of foreign occupiers.
The third factor is the coalition's choice of major search areas. In many ways, the hunt for bin Laden depends on clandestinely acquired information, and those who comment on the effort - including the present author - must admit that they are commenting and analyzing on the basis of informed speculation, common sense and historical precedent.
For the past several years, the hunt for bin Laden has been concentrated in Pakistan's Waziristan region and the area adjacent to it on the Afghan side of the border. Coalition and Afghan forces, Pakistan's intelligence service and border guards, and the Pakistani regular army have been involved in the hunt. One must assume that credible information has led them to that location. Nevertheless, there are several good reasons that make Waziristan an unlikely top choice as a hiding spot for bin Laden and his lieutenants.
A. Although clearly a remote area, Waziristan is an area through which much commerce and smuggling takes place. In addition, there is a great deal of simply tribe-, clan- or family-related movement through the area because of the trans-border ethnic homogeneity. Of the entire length of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, only the Kandahar-Chaman-Quetta and Kabul-Jalalabad-Peshawar corridors have more of such activity, making Waziristan an area in which everyday human and business traffic provides substantial cover for those hunting a fugitive, and thereby making it a relatively unattractive refuge.
B. Waziristan was a major staging and training area for the Afghan mujahideen and their non-Afghan allies during the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s. As a result, the Pakistani, American and Russian governments hold a good deal of information about the location of camps, depots and hideouts built by the Afghan mujahideen. This kind of information also is held by some of the war correspondents who covered the Afghan-USSR war, and who are now covering the present insurgency. It seems fair to conclude that the anti-Soviet mujahideen built their facilities in what they determined were the most secure locations in Waziristan, and that bin Laden and his lieutenants are fully aware that their current enemies have knowledge of these bases, and so they would not seek safe haven in places known to those hunting them.
C. The US government, its NATO allies, President Hamid Karzai's administration and scores of Western media reporters and terrorism "experts" have, over the past six years, made no secret of their belief that bin Laden and his leadership team is in Waziristan. The US-led coalition's military, diplomatic and political officials repeatedly have said publicly that they are putting much of their resources into the Waziristan-focused hunt for bin Laden and his organization. As a result, bin Laden would have to be dimwitted to stay in Waziristan in the face of his enemies' providing him with credible and detailed intelligence about their focus and intentions.
While based on the region's history and informed speculation, the northeastern Afghan areas of Konar province and Nuristan and the adjacent Bajaur Agency in Pakistan lend themselves far better to bin Laden's security needs:
A. This mountainous region is one of the most remote and rugged in Afghanistan; it is the virtually inaccessible area in which Rudyard Kipling set the events of his timeless story, The Man Who Would Be King. Roads are few, the population is scattered and it hosts nothing like the commercial and smuggling activity found in Waziristan. Additionally, in terms of the quality of maps available to bin Laden hunters, this region is much less well-documented than the admittedly poorly mapped Waziristan area.
The topography, therefore, favors anyone trying to hide because, once positioned on the high ground, fugitives will have an early visual warning of any approaching foe. The terrain likewise favors the hit-and-run and ambush tactics of insurgent fighters. During the anti-Soviet jihad, for example, the communist garrison stationed in Konar's capital of Asadabad was more or less marooned. Operations staged from the city were never a surprise, and were often met by ambushes. Likewise, convoys bringing reinforcements and supplies from the south were often ambushed.
B. The areas of Konar and Nuristan also were strong mujahideen redoubts during the Afghan-Soviet war. Indeed, the first resistance to the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul originated in Nuristan in 1978, and the region itself hosted forces belonging to several prominent mujahideen commanders. The most important of these, from bin Laden's current perspective, is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his Hezb-e-Islami organization.
An early sponsor and longtime friend of bin Laden - he helped facilitate the al-Qaeda chief's return to Afghanistan in May 1996 - Hekmatyar maintains strong forces in parts of Konar province and most of adjacent Laghman province to the east. Media reporting likewise indicates that another al-Qaeda ally, the Kashmiri Lashkar-i-Taiba maintains a presence and perhaps training facilities in Konar province. In terms of jihadi colleagues, the region appears well-stocked with bin Laden's allies.
C. The Konar-Nuristan-Bajaur Agency area also has been a region on which Salafi missionaries from Saudi Arabia and other Arabian peninsula states have focused their proselytizing efforts for several decades. Saudi fighters were allowed by the population to train in the region during the war against the USSR, and today it stands as one of the most - and perhaps the most - Salafi area in South Asia. As a Salafi himself, bin Laden would be sure to find the area both welcoming and religiously comfortable. This shared Salafism, moreover, would add another measure of security for bin Laden as his co-religionists are unlikely to cooperate with those seeking his apprehension.
D. This region also is one that bin Laden had his eye on as home since his 1996 return to Afghanistan. When in the spring of 1997 he was preparing to leave his residence in Nangarhar province after several attempts on his life, bin Laden's inclination was to proceed north into the Konar-Nuristan area. He decided against this plan, however, when the Taliban invited him to live in its capital at Kandahar. He then believed it would be politically unwise for al-Qaeda to turn down an invitation from Afghanistan's de facto government. No such consideration is now relevant.
The fourth and final factor is the lack of resources devoted to the hunt. Given Afghanistan's sheer size and extraordinarily mountainous terrain, the current level of forces available to the US-led coalition appears inadequate to perform all the tasks it has been assigned. In addition to eliminating bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and al-Qaeda, for example, the coalition's forces are being asked to keep President Karzai's government in power, rebuild the country's economy and transportation infrastructure, help organize a democratic political system, defeat the growing Taliban-led insurgency and eliminate the world's largest heroin industry.
Of the 50,000 total coalition troops at their command, it seems unlikely that US and NATO commanders can field more than half of that total as combat forces; indeed, some NATO contingents are forbidden by their governments from performing combat duties. That force seems inadequate for the tasks assigned to it, and may well be outnumbered by the manpower involved in the growing Islamist insurgency.
Michael Scheuer served as the chief of the bin Laden Unit at the CIA's Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999.
More than six years after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Osama bin Laden remains free, healthy and safe enough to produce audio and videotapes that dominate the international media at the times of his choosing.
Popular attitudes, and some official ones, in the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies tend to denigrate the efforts made by their military and intelligence services to capture the al-Qaeda chief. The common question always is, "Why can't the US superpower and its allies find one six-foot, five-inch Saudi with an extraordinarily well-known face?"
The answers are several, each is compelling, and together they suggest that the US-led coalition's military and intelligence forces are too over-tasked and spread far too thin to have more than a slim chance of capturing or killing bin Laden and his senior lieutenants.
The first factor is the issue of topography. Few US citizens or Europeans have any idea of what the terrain of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border looks like.
This shortcoming must be attributed to the failure of Western leaders to educate their electorates using the abundant and commercially available satellite photography that depicts the nightmarish mountains, forests and roadless terrain in which Western forces conduct their search. The border area is genuinely a frontier in the sense of the American Old West, but with mountains that dwarf even the Rockies. Such use of satellite photography would likewise show voters that the Western concept of a "border" as a well-defined and manageable demarcation between two nation-states is not remotely applicable regarding the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
The second factor is the role of the indigenous population. Bin Laden and his lieutenants appear to currently reside in a region dominated on both sides of the border by Pashtun tribes. Ethnically and linguistically, the Pashtun are fairly homogenous, but the multiple tribes are divided and subdivided into myriad, often rival, clans. What all Pashtuns share, however, is a quite conservative brand of Islam and a tribal tradition that insists that no individual, once accepted as a guest by the tribe, ever be surrendered to those seeking him and that he be defended to the death.
Buttressing this tribal stricture in bin Laden's case is the fact that the Pashtuns are conservative Muslims, and regard him - as does much of the Muslim world - as an Islamic hero. The strength of this combination is evident when it is noted that no Pashtun has stepped forward to collect a cent of the tens of the millions of dollars the United States is willing to pay for information leading to bin Laden's capture or death.
It also is worth noting that the Pashtun custom of guest protection and their tendency to evaluate bin Laden as an Islamic hero is more or less shared by all Sunni Afghans, that it is a near-countrywide Afghan characteristic. Thus, the US-led coalition's military and intelligence personnel are likely to encounter these attributes along most of the 1,700-kilometer Pakistan-Afghanistan border in areas north and south of the Pashtun-dominated central border area.
In addition, the Afghans' traditional hostility to foreign occupation traverses all ethnic groups and this nearly universal attitude is likely to be encountered with increasing stridency as the coalition's presence progresses through its seventh year. Recent media reporting, for example, shows that some mujahideen groups in the pro-Karzai Northern Alliance's heartland are beginning to reform on the basis of a desire to rid Afghanistan of what they view as its current set of foreign occupiers.
The third factor is the coalition's choice of major search areas. In many ways, the hunt for bin Laden depends on clandestinely acquired information, and those who comment on the effort - including the present author - must admit that they are commenting and analyzing on the basis of informed speculation, common sense and historical precedent.
For the past several years, the hunt for bin Laden has been concentrated in Pakistan's Waziristan region and the area adjacent to it on the Afghan side of the border. Coalition and Afghan forces, Pakistan's intelligence service and border guards, and the Pakistani regular army have been involved in the hunt. One must assume that credible information has led them to that location. Nevertheless, there are several good reasons that make Waziristan an unlikely top choice as a hiding spot for bin Laden and his lieutenants.
A. Although clearly a remote area, Waziristan is an area through which much commerce and smuggling takes place. In addition, there is a great deal of simply tribe-, clan- or family-related movement through the area because of the trans-border ethnic homogeneity. Of the entire length of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, only the Kandahar-Chaman-Quetta and Kabul-Jalalabad-Peshawar corridors have more of such activity, making Waziristan an area in which everyday human and business traffic provides substantial cover for those hunting a fugitive, and thereby making it a relatively unattractive refuge.
B. Waziristan was a major staging and training area for the Afghan mujahideen and their non-Afghan allies during the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s. As a result, the Pakistani, American and Russian governments hold a good deal of information about the location of camps, depots and hideouts built by the Afghan mujahideen. This kind of information also is held by some of the war correspondents who covered the Afghan-USSR war, and who are now covering the present insurgency. It seems fair to conclude that the anti-Soviet mujahideen built their facilities in what they determined were the most secure locations in Waziristan, and that bin Laden and his lieutenants are fully aware that their current enemies have knowledge of these bases, and so they would not seek safe haven in places known to those hunting them.
C. The US government, its NATO allies, President Hamid Karzai's administration and scores of Western media reporters and terrorism "experts" have, over the past six years, made no secret of their belief that bin Laden and his leadership team is in Waziristan. The US-led coalition's military, diplomatic and political officials repeatedly have said publicly that they are putting much of their resources into the Waziristan-focused hunt for bin Laden and his organization. As a result, bin Laden would have to be dimwitted to stay in Waziristan in the face of his enemies' providing him with credible and detailed intelligence about their focus and intentions.
While based on the region's history and informed speculation, the northeastern Afghan areas of Konar province and Nuristan and the adjacent Bajaur Agency in Pakistan lend themselves far better to bin Laden's security needs:
A. This mountainous region is one of the most remote and rugged in Afghanistan; it is the virtually inaccessible area in which Rudyard Kipling set the events of his timeless story, The Man Who Would Be King. Roads are few, the population is scattered and it hosts nothing like the commercial and smuggling activity found in Waziristan. Additionally, in terms of the quality of maps available to bin Laden hunters, this region is much less well-documented than the admittedly poorly mapped Waziristan area.
The topography, therefore, favors anyone trying to hide because, once positioned on the high ground, fugitives will have an early visual warning of any approaching foe. The terrain likewise favors the hit-and-run and ambush tactics of insurgent fighters. During the anti-Soviet jihad, for example, the communist garrison stationed in Konar's capital of Asadabad was more or less marooned. Operations staged from the city were never a surprise, and were often met by ambushes. Likewise, convoys bringing reinforcements and supplies from the south were often ambushed.
B. The areas of Konar and Nuristan also were strong mujahideen redoubts during the Afghan-Soviet war. Indeed, the first resistance to the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul originated in Nuristan in 1978, and the region itself hosted forces belonging to several prominent mujahideen commanders. The most important of these, from bin Laden's current perspective, is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his Hezb-e-Islami organization.
An early sponsor and longtime friend of bin Laden - he helped facilitate the al-Qaeda chief's return to Afghanistan in May 1996 - Hekmatyar maintains strong forces in parts of Konar province and most of adjacent Laghman province to the east. Media reporting likewise indicates that another al-Qaeda ally, the Kashmiri Lashkar-i-Taiba maintains a presence and perhaps training facilities in Konar province. In terms of jihadi colleagues, the region appears well-stocked with bin Laden's allies.
C. The Konar-Nuristan-Bajaur Agency area also has been a region on which Salafi missionaries from Saudi Arabia and other Arabian peninsula states have focused their proselytizing efforts for several decades. Saudi fighters were allowed by the population to train in the region during the war against the USSR, and today it stands as one of the most - and perhaps the most - Salafi area in South Asia. As a Salafi himself, bin Laden would be sure to find the area both welcoming and religiously comfortable. This shared Salafism, moreover, would add another measure of security for bin Laden as his co-religionists are unlikely to cooperate with those seeking his apprehension.
D. This region also is one that bin Laden had his eye on as home since his 1996 return to Afghanistan. When in the spring of 1997 he was preparing to leave his residence in Nangarhar province after several attempts on his life, bin Laden's inclination was to proceed north into the Konar-Nuristan area. He decided against this plan, however, when the Taliban invited him to live in its capital at Kandahar. He then believed it would be politically unwise for al-Qaeda to turn down an invitation from Afghanistan's de facto government. No such consideration is now relevant.
The fourth and final factor is the lack of resources devoted to the hunt. Given Afghanistan's sheer size and extraordinarily mountainous terrain, the current level of forces available to the US-led coalition appears inadequate to perform all the tasks it has been assigned. In addition to eliminating bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and al-Qaeda, for example, the coalition's forces are being asked to keep President Karzai's government in power, rebuild the country's economy and transportation infrastructure, help organize a democratic political system, defeat the growing Taliban-led insurgency and eliminate the world's largest heroin industry.
Of the 50,000 total coalition troops at their command, it seems unlikely that US and NATO commanders can field more than half of that total as combat forces; indeed, some NATO contingents are forbidden by their governments from performing combat duties. That force seems inadequate for the tasks assigned to it, and may well be outnumbered by the manpower involved in the growing Islamist insurgency.
Michael Scheuer served as the chief of the bin Laden Unit at the CIA's Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Israel isn't worth 'an American life or an American dollar'
Ex CIA Bin Laden expert Michael Scheuer, interviewed by Bill Maher:
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Fmr. Chief of CIA Osama Unit’s Statement on Ron Paul and Why They Attack Us
Sir,
In the dozen-plus years I have been active in matters relating to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, I have watched them go from a small Islamist organization to a worldwide insurgent movement, while bin Laden has established himself as the primary source of inspiration and leadership for tens of millions of Muslim Islamists. This process has been made possible by two things: (a) the skill, courage, patience, and ruthlessness of bin Laden and his ilk, and (b) the refusal of the U.S. government to understand the motivation of bin Laden and his allies.
Last week, Representative Paul did all Americans an immense service by simply pointing out the obvious: Our Islamist enemies do not give a damn about the way we vote, think, or live. Though any country they ruled would surely not look like ours, they are motivated by the belief that U.S. foreign policy is an attack on Islam, its lands, and its believers. This, of course, is not to say that America is to blame for the war it is now engaged in, but it is to say that it is foolish – and perhaps fatal – for Americans to believe that are we are being attacked for such ephemera as primary elections, R-rated movies, and gender equality. If our Islamist enemies were motivated by such things their numbers would be minuscule and they would be a sporadic lethal nuisance, not, as they are, the most serious national security threat we face today.
Of the eighteen presidential candidates now in the field from both parties, only Mr. Paul has had the courage to square with the average American voter. We are indeed hated and being warred against because we are “over there,” and not for what we are and how we live. Our failure to recognize the truth spoken by Mr. Paul – and spelled out for us in hundreds of pages of statements by Osama bin Laden since 1996 – is leading America toward military and economic disaster.
At day’s end, Mr. Paul has at least temporarily shaken the pillars of the bipartisan consensus on U.S. foreign policy. Neither party, and none of the candidates, want to discuss the Islamists’ motivation because they would have to deal with energy policy, support for Israel, and the 50-year record of U.S. support and protection for Arab tyrannies. These holy cows of U.S. politics have long been off limits to debate, but Mr. Paul has now accurately identified them as the source of motivation for our Islamist enemies, and implicitly has said that the obsessive interventionism of both parties has inspired al-Qaeda and its allies to kill 7,000-plus U.S. civilians and military personnel since 11 September 2001. The war we are engaged in with the Islamists is a long way from over, but it need end in America’s defeat only if Mr. Paul’s frank statements are ignored.
And no matter how you view Mr. Paul’s words, you can safely take one thing to the bank. The person most shaken by Mr. Paul’s frankness was Osama bin Laden, who knows that the current status quo in U.S. foreign policy toward the Islamic world is al-Qaeda’s one indispensable ally, and the only glue that provides cohesion between and among the diverse and often fractious Islamist groups that follow its banner.
Respectfully,
Michael F. Scheuer
Falls Church, VA
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