Imperial Hubris (short version) by Michael Scheuer (aka Anonymous)

This is a significant book by a former CIA analyst. From the title I had expected something of a rant from someone who thought a bit like I do. I was pleasantly surprised. The book is pretty balanced and takes a lot of people to task for our intelligence failures. A flavor of Mr. Scheuer's conservative bona fides: " ...It was said 'Let Reagan be Reagan' when that great and good man was president,[italics mine] and the key here is to let the FBI and its police allies across America do things at which they excel and not insist they do things-especially, operations overseas-for which they are unsuited by mission, structure, training, and attitude."

He begins in the introduction with some clear observations about bin Laden and his attacks on the US:

...These attacks are meant to advance bin Laden's clear, focused, limited, and widely popular foreign policy goals: the end of u.s. aid to Israel and the ultimate elimination of that state; the removal of u.s. and Western forces from the Arabian Peninsula; ...
...Bin Laden is out to drastically alter u.s. and Western policies toward the Islamic world, not necessarily to destroy America, much less its freedoms and liberties. He is a practical warrior, not an apocalyptic terrorist in search of Armageddon.

In chapter one Mr. Scheuer talks about how Muslims perceive America's actions:

Challenging God's Word [and Attacking the Faithful]

• America has declared that waging jihad against Islam's attackers is a criminal act... For a Muslim to refrain from joining a defensive jihad to protect Islam means disobeying God's law and earning damnation.
• America has demanded that Muslim regimes limit, control, and track the donations.. Tithing is one of Islam's five pillars, and so America is asking Muslims to abandon God's law for manmade law.
• America has demanded Muslim educational authorities alter their curricula to teach a brand of Islam more in keeping with modernity and, not coincidentally, U.S. interests. ...
• U.S. policy supports oppression and often aggression [in non-Muslim countries].
• America supports apostate Islamic governments...
• America, on its own or with the UN, often imposes economic and military sanctions on Muslims...
• The U.S. government and oil companies are seeking control of the Arab Peninsula...
• America helped the UN create a new Christian state in East Timor...
• America now occupies and effectively rules the Muslim states of Afghanistan, Iraq, and the states of the Arabian Peninsula, the Prophet Mohammed's birthplace.
• America invariably backs Israel's occupation of Muslim Palestine and invaded Iraq to advance the Jews' goal of creating a "Greater Israel" from the Nile to the Euphrates.

He has a great way of describing events such as the war in Afganistan:

Like Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in the 1930s movies, U.S. government agencies got the neighborhood kids together, gave each a role and a script, and expected to produce a professional Broadway musical in the backyard-Andy Hardy Conquers and Rebuilds Kabul, perhaps. Sadly, success from "winging it" occurs only in movies, and Washington's attempt to duplicate Hollywood's methods in Afghanistan yielded a full-blown disaster. As Ralph Peters has wisely posited, "If you intervene ignorant of local conditions, you will likely fail-and you will certainly pay in blood."

He explains how we have underestimated our opponents: "Like [Robert E.] Lee's boys, the mujahideen are often dirty, unkempt, bearded, armed with a variety of weapons, rarely paid, and haphazardly supplied. And like Lee's boys, they are aflame with courage, audaciousness, commitment to their cause, optimism, and religious zeal."

Significantly for me, Mr. Scheuer addresses the economic effects of what's going on, and he gives us some insight into how we are shooting ourselves in our economic foot:

The 11 September attacks, of course, devastated the u.S. economy...

Likewise, al Qaeda is at the core of massive increases in defense spending...:

• ....the steady diet of shocks thrown into business by steady call-ups of reserve-soldier employees...
• ...Without a second 11 September-like attack, al Qaeda has stimulated immense unanticipated spending...
• "Aborting the American economy is not an unattainable dream," al-Qurashi wrote in AI-Ansar. Perhaps he is correct.

Some of our delusions:

• The term "irrational," it seems to me, is better applied to Americans who have forgotten, or never learned, Nathan Bedford Forrest's lesson that "war means fighting and fighting means killing," ...
• ...The West, I believe, completely underestimates the degree of admiration, respect, and even love accorded to the 11 September attackers, especially by young Muslims.
• ...For years, we in the West have watched the actions of Palestinian suicide bombers and concluded that the young men and, now, women are tragic figures, victims of poverty, poor education, joblessness, despair, and brainwashing by cynical political and religious leaders.
• ...To date, we have been unable to see the issue through any but Western eyes, and so have missed recognizing that the young Palestinian bombers are seen by large numbers of Muslims as heroes...

He also talks about religions in a way that prompted me to think about a life cycle: that is, religion is like a person. Christianity reached adolesence in the middle ages with the Crusades and witch burnings. Islam is 500 years younger and is reaching adolesence now. I leave the reader to draw conclusions about the current Christian evangelism.

What's frightening is what I have learned about what Muslim countries believe about us: "...in June 2003, the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that majorities in seven of eight Muslim countries feared a U.S. invasion;..." And, that bin Laden is strategically and tactically competent: ". . . . Take care not to be pushed into fragmenting your efforts and squandering your resources in marginal battles with the lackeys and parties but concentrate the blows on the head of the unfaith[ful] until it collapses. Once it collapses, all the other parts will collapse, vanish and be defeated."

Shades of Rummie: "...Americans must understand the world as it is, not as we want-or worse yet, hope-it will be. While I believe this contention is true for all of America's dealings with the world, I am not smart or arrogant enough to formulate an all-inclusive approach to u.s. foreign policy. I do, however, have long experience analyzing and attacking bin Laden and Islamists."

How we conduct these wars:

Each of these American soldiers knew-by training, intuition, or both-that war is a last resort and that once begun it is immoral and unnecessarily costly not to destroy the enemy and end the war as soon as possible. Damage is to be inflicted to the degree needed to ensure the enemy does not pose a military threat...

One of the points that resonated most with me was that we can only manage our affairs. We can only be responsible for ourselves. We can only help those who want to be helped.

On 4 July, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams stood in the well of the House of Representatives-then used for some public occasions-and made a speech understood to be his personal views "... does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the wellwisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her own example. She well knows that by once enlisting under banners other than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, ambition, which assumed the colors and usurped the standards of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. . . . She might become the dictatress of the world. She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.

And a few other observations:

The difference between Mr. Lincoln's moral conclusion and the moral arguments usually made during wartime is that he did not identify the enemy alone as evil. - Kent Gramm, 1994.

Frenetic activity, ceaseless chatter, and loud voices usually signal confusion, and nowhere more than in Washington. Let us get on with the war and recall the power of silence. After all, bin Laden has us scared to death, and we have heard little from him since 2001.

I highly reccomend this book to anyone who wants to understand what is going on in the world and our part in that activity. By no means have the excerpts here covered all the insights to be found in Imperial Hubris.