Scheuer missed bin Laden, and a lot more.
(Originally published in Frontpage Magazine.)
The strength of Al-Qaeda remains very much in question as
Americans vacation in the summer heat. Contradictory
remarks from Homeland Defense Chief Michael Chertoff and
the White House leave the impression that counter-terrorism
is a very edgy and uncertain business. It is.
Intelligence insiders tell us terror cells exist in the
U.S., potentially dangerous at any time, but no one claims
to know their orders, scale, or level of cunning. A
healthy level of skepticism is warranted whenever a
terrorism "expert" pops onto the screen.
One such expert, Michael Scheuer, former director of the
CIA unit responsible to apprehend Osama Bin Laden, recently
stated to ABC News "We've tried to do Afghanistan on the
cheap, and it's going to cost us domestically in terms of
the next attack on the United States." Those foreboding
words, and additional comments over the last few years
contain some troubling assertions, which he delivers with
the characteristic style of a former Federal bureaucrat:
Scheuer appears to enjoy disparaging his former employer.
Scheuer's 2004 critique of US foreign policy "Imperial
Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror," indicts
neo-conservatism and implicates Israel:
"Surely there can be no other historical example of a
faraway, theocracy-in-all-but-name of only six million
people that ultimately controls the extent and even the
occurrence of an important portion of political discourse
and national security debate in a country of 270-plus
million people that prides itself on religious toleration,
separation of church and state, and freedom of speech."
Scheuer's characterization of Israel as a theocracy is
ludicrous--Israel is the only secular democracy in the
Middle East, with citizens free to practice any religion,
or none at all. At least Scheuer's predilection is
clear--he does not hide his antipathy for the secular
Jewish state.
On April 9th of this year, in a speech to the Center for
Naval Analysis, Scheuer said:
"By defining bin Laden and his ilk as would-be Islamist
Hitlers, the U.S. citizen Israel-firsters who dominate the
American governing elite ensure that those who question the
nature and benefit of current U.S.-Israel ties are
slandered as pro-Nazi, anti-Semites."
In this case Scheuer, citing no specific evidence, invents
a conspiracy to fulfill his ideological framework. In his
world the U.S. political, economic, and military alliance
with Israel is a reverse proof that U.S. policy is
"dominated" by that interest group. Who are these shadowy
dominators, and what is the source of their awesome power?
Scheuer has no answers, only insinuation and circular
logic.
Scheuer publicly defended the innuendo-ridden
Walt/Mearsheimer report, which he said "critiqued at length
the prolonged, deranging, and clearly negative impact the
Israeli lobby has had on the formulation and conduct of
U.S. foreign policy." The imprimatur of Harvard University
was rescinded from Walt/Mearsheimer. Numerous scholars,
including Alan Dershowitz, have documented the report's
errors of fact, omission, inaccurate citations, and lack of
adherence to basic scholarly standards regarding sources
and interpretation.
Also troubling, in 2005, Scheuer remarked to the Council on
Foreign Relations that Israel operates in America "probably
the most successful covert-action program in the history of
man." His lone example was the Holocaust Museum in
Washington, hardly a coup.
Now that you know the consipatorial musings of Scheuer's
imaginative mind, several questions arise: How does a top
CIA official develop and espouse views diametrically
opposed to U.S. foreign policy since 1948? Is he correct in
his assertions? Does it matter if he is wrong?
Like other analysts--Jimmy Carter, Pat Buchanan, Mel
Gibson, Norman Finkelstein, David Duke--who consider the
U.S.-Israel relationship a root cause of Muslim fury,
Scheuer is primed and ready to be called an anti-semite, so
don't go there. A greater rhetorical faux pas would be to
mention the Holocaust, or reference the Sudetenland (ceded
in 1938 to appease Hitler).
There is one sure way former staffers like Scheuer, a
self-described "life-long Republican," enter the limelight
and lecture circuit: vehemently criticize the Bush
administration, and blame the entire morass on Israel (the
Jews). That is truly what Scheuer and his ilk intend when
they conjure and decry a pro-Israel hegemon within the
United States.
Is it possible that a mere six-million beleaguered Jews in
Israel, many recent immigrants from the former Soviet
Union, Africa and elsewhere, could manipulate the world's
only superpower? How many "Elders of Zion" live among us
here in the United States? To paraphrase Natan Sharansky,
from his book The Case for Democracy: to demonize,
delegitimize, and hold Israel to a double-standard is
modern anti-semitism. To anyone who studies world history
and the Hebrew Bible, this prepossession and prejudice
remains as old as the Judean hills.
The Jews, slaughtered and exiled from their sole homeland
by the Romans, wandering the globe for 2000 years,
miraculously found their way back to their Biblical
homeland, a prophesied return for which the pious pray
three times a day. Repeatedly exiled from nations of their
Diaspora (dispersion), 21st century Jews are forced to
entertain the mortifying question of their "right to exist"
in their ancient sliver of a homeland. The conspiratorial
anti-Israelists profoundly misunderstand the meaning of
their one correct conclusion: Israel represents the essence
of the struggle. The Jews were participants in the Genesis
of western civilization, contribute fully to the blossoming
of our advanced culture, and will still exist when the
walls come tumbling down. Let's hope Scheuer and his
cohorts are unable to hasten its demise.
