On the September 28, 2014 edition of 60 Minutes, President Barack Obama spoke about his recent decision to commit American troops to fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
“When trouble comes up anywhere in the world,” said Obama, “they don’t call Beijing. They don’t call Moscow. They call us.”
And, according to former CIA agent Michael Scheuer, that’s the problem: America can’t learn to mind its own business.
Scheuer is a 20-year CIA veteran–as well as an author, historian, foreign policy critic and political analyst.
Michael Scheuer
From 1996 to 1999 he headed Alec Station, the CIA’s unit assigned to track Osama bin Laden at the agency’s Counterterrorism Center.
He is currently an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Peace and Security Studies.
He’s also the author of two seminal works on America’s fight against terrorism:Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror (2003) and Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam after Iraq (2008).
Scheuer says that Islamics don’t hate Americans because of “our way of life”–with its freedoms of speech and worship and its highly secular, commercialized culture.
Instead, Islamic hatred toward the United States stems from America’s six longstanding policies in the Middle East:
- U.S. support for apostate, corrupt, and tyrannical Muslim governments
- U.S. and other Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula
- U.S. support for Israel that keeps Palestinians in the Israelis’ thrall
- U.S. pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low
- U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan
- U.S. support for Russia, India, and China against their Muslim militants
Scheuer contends that no amount of American propaganda will win “the hearts and minds” of Islamics who can “see, hear, experience, and hate” these policies firsthand.
But there is another danger facing America, says Scheuer, one that threatens “the core of our social and civil institutions.”
And in Marching Toward Hell he bluntly indicts that threat: The “profound and willful ignorance” of America’s “bipartisan governing elite.”
Scheuer defines this elite as “the inbred set of individuals who have influenced…drafted and conducted U.S. foreign policy” since 1973.
Within that group are:
- politicians
- journalists
- academics
- preachers
- civil servants
- military officers
- philanthropists.
“Some are Republicans, others Democrats; some are evangelicals, others atheists; some are militarists, others pacifists; some are purveyors of Western civilization, others are multiculturalists,” writes Scheuer.
But for all their political and/or philosophical differences, the members of this governing elite share one belief in common.
According to Scheuer, that belief is “an unquenchable ardor to have the United States intervene abroad in all places, situations and times.”
And he warns that this “bipartisan governing elite” must radically change its policies–such as unconditional support for Israel and corrupt, tyrannical Muslim governments.
Otherwise, Americans will be locked in an endless “hot war” with the Islamic world.
During his September 28 appearance on 60 Minutes, President Obama admitted that the mostly Sunni-Muslim Iraqi army had refused to combat the Sunni army of ISIS.
Then followed this exchange:
Steve Kroft: What happens if the Iraqis don’t fight or can’t fight?
President Obama: Well…
Steve Kroft: What’s the end game?
President Obama: I’m not going to speculate on failure at the moment. We’re just getting started. Let’s see how they do.
It was precisely such a mindset that led the United States, step by step, into the Vietnam quagmire.
As in the case of Vietnam, the United States lacks:
- Real or worthwhile allies in Iraq or Syria;
- A working knowledge of the peoples it wants to influence in either country;
- Clearly-defined goals that it seeks to accomplish in that region.
America rushed to disaster in Vietnam because its foreign policy elite felt it had to “do something” to fight Communism anywhere in the world.
And it is continuing to rush toward disaster in the Middle East because its foreign policy elite once again feels is must “do something.”
During his interview with the “Today” show, Carl Mueller–the father of Kayla, who went to Syria to help Syrians caught up in their own civil war–said:
“How many mistakes have we all made in life that were naïve and didn’t get caught at? Kayla was just in a place that was more dangerous than most. And she couldn’t help herself. She had to go in there and had to help.”
But there were plenty of communities within the United States that could have used the help of a truly caring social activist. And plenty of organizations–such as Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), Habitat for Humanity and Catholic Relief Services–that would have been thrilled to have her services.
And she could have made lives better without constantly facing the dangers of kidnapping by Islamics determined to humiliate and slaughter Americans.
Michael Sheuer is right: The United States should learn to mind its own business and quit intervening in the affairs of Middle Eastern governments and peoples.
Kayla Mueller is proof of the rightness of that assertion.
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LET KILLERS BE KILLERS: PART ONE (OF THREE)
In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 19, 2015 at 12:07 amOn April 16, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights released some encouraging news for potential victims of Islamic terrorism–and those fighting it.
More than 310,000 people have been killed in Syria’s uprising-turned-civil war.
Put another way: More than 310,000 potential or actual Islamic terrorists will never again pose a threat to the United States or Western Europe.
The Syrian conflict began on March 15, 2011, triggered by protests demanding political reforms and the ouster of dictator Bashar al-Assad.
According to the Observatory, which is safely based in Britain:
And who does the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights blame for this Islamic self-slaughter? Why, the West, of course.
According to its website:
“The silence of the International community for the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Syria encourages the criminals to kill more and more Syrian people because they have not found anyone that deter them from continuing their crimes that cause to wound more than 1500000 people; some of them with permanent disabilities, make hundreds of thousands children without parents, displace more than half of Syrian people and destroy infrastructure, private and public properties.”
310,000 people killed since the beginning of the Syrian Revolution | Syrian Observatory For Human Rights
Got that? “They have not found anyone that deter them from continuing their crimes”–as if it’s the duty of non-Muslims to bring civilized behavior to Islamics.
And why are all these murderers “continuing their crimes”? Because of a religious dispute within Islam that traces back to the fourth century.
Yes, it’s Sunni Muslims, who make up a majority of Islamics, versus Shiite Muslims, who comprise a minority.
Each group considers the other takfirs–that is, “apostates.” And, in Islam, being labeled an apostate can easily get you murdered.
But, according to the Syrian Observatory, it’s the duty of the infidel West to convince these murderers to stop slaughtering one another.
Think of it:
Meanwhile, Right-wing Republicans demand that the United States thrust itself into a conflict that doesn’t threaten or concern Americans in any way.
On August 14, conservative columnist David Brooks appeared on the “Week’s Roundup” segment of The PBS Newshour.
Speaking of the current Islamic self-slaughter in Iraq, he said:
“I do think that we abandoned Iraq too quickly, left too quickly, left a void in the Sunni areas, which ISIS was completely happy to fill.
David Brooks
“But more important–and this is a bigger indictment of the Obama administration–we did nothing about the Syrian civil war. And that created the biggest void.
“And that’s not necessarily [Senator] Hillary Clinton’s fault because she was arguing for a more aggressive policy. Nonetheless, we did nothing.
“Even today, our attacks on ISIS are paltry, and we have continue to do nothing. And there are strategic issues. There are just moral issues.
“Today, my newspaper [The New York Times] had a front-page story on just rape academies, this institutionalized rape.
“And the fact that we can stand by and do nothing while this is happening, to me, that’s an indictment of the sitting administration.”
David Corn, the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine, appeared on that Newshour segment. And he had a totally different take on the matter:
“…It wasn’t until after [President George W. Bush’s] invasion of Iraq that you had something called al-Qaida in Iraq. And that was the group that morphed into ISIS. So ISIS is a direct result of the war in Iraq right there….
“But then [Presidential candidate Jeb Bush] said what happened was that [President Barack] Obama and [then-Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton orchestrated this quick withdrawal after everything was secure.
David Corn
“Nothing was really secure in 2009-2010….But it was George W. Bush in December 2008 who created the agreement with [Iraqi] Prime Minister [Nouri] Maliki that said that U.S. troops had to be out by 2011.
“And then Obama didn’t renegotiate that. And there is a lot of question as to whether he could even have, given the political situation in Baghdad itself. So…Jeb Bush is totally rewriting this. And my question is, why is he even talking about Iraq?”
To which Brooks replied: “He wants to have an anti-terror foreign policy.”
According to Micheal Scheuer, for all their ideological differences, Republicans and Democrats share one belief in common: “An unquenchable ardor to have the United States intervene abroad in all places, situations and times.”
Scheuer is a 20-year CIA veteran–as well as an author, historian, foreign policy critic and political analyst.
Michael Scheuer
From 1996 to 1999 he headed Alec Station, the CIA’s unit assigned to track Osama bin Laden at the agency’s Counterterrorism Center.
And he’s convinced that if America wants peace, it must learn to mind its own business.
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