Michael Scheuer | Non-Intervention

A recent reader’s comment asked if there is a kind of U.S. intervention that is appropriate. I take this to mean: “Is there a kind of U.S. intervention abroad that will help the United States and the people we are seeking to help?” The writer suggested a facility like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to broadcast our “ideas” to oppressed peoples. I think RFE/RL and the Voice of America are useful tools for telling foreigners about America, how it works, and its problems and successes, but they should not be used to encourage others to rebel against oppressive governments.

The latter activity has been engaged in by some media organizations and it has always struck me as the height of cruelty. This practice amounts to nice, safe Westerners urging young, restive foreigners to take to the streets against tyrannies only to find themselves faced by machine guns and tanks with no chance of help from their Western exhorters. Many media organizations and the users of Facebook and Twitter engaged in this type of despicable behavior after Iran’s last presidential election, and, even today, the BBC World Service seems to be hoping for violence by Ivory Coast voters who think their candidate lost in a recent, rigged presidential election.

Let me address several other points on this issue. The United States, since its founding, has been exactly the right sort of interventionist vehicle so long as it did not go adventuring abroad. Indeed, the Founders created a nation meant to be an example for the world of the positive social, individual, and economic impact of a constitutional order featuring individual freedoms, equality of opportunity, and the rule of law. The Founders’ nation was far from perfect in terms of fully installing these features, and we certainly have not completed their work. But as a nearly 235-year-old work in progress we have done pretty well, and our very existence and success stands as a positive exemplar to the rest of the world, especially to the oppressed parts of it. (Needless to say, it is also a constant irritation, if not a provocation to oppressors.) Our example is the positive form of intervention the Founders intended for America. The idea of imposing our example on foreigners struck them — as it should us — as the road to overseas commitments and wars that will ultimately have a negative and perhaps disastrous impact on liberty here at home.

In terms of humanitarian intervention, I believe there is a role for America’s public and private sectors to play, but only if the effort is directed at the poorest of the poor and is not used to try to make the recipients into Westerners. Afghans, for example, need means for producing more potable water, not democracy; Bangladeshis need inoculations for an array of diseases, not women’s rights; and any number of Africans need flour and other foodstuffs, not lessons in secularism. And each of the above need tools for education — from blackboards and chalk to basic computers — not Westernized lesson plans meant to inculcate secularism.

Washington’s role should focus on foodstuffs, preventative medicines, basic agricultural machinery, and tools and technology pertinent to communications, farming, and education. This sort of basic foreign aid would be most useful to the world’s poor, and would create a positive impression of America’s interest and generosity as long as it is not delivered together with proselytizing sermons on the glories of democracy, secularism, and abortion. To achieve this goal, aid would have to delivered by U.S. citizens — or officials? — under the leadership and binding guidance of local leaders, be they tribal chiefs, mullahs, elected officials, or witch doctors. The thoroughly corrupt UN; NGOs panting to Westernize and secularize; and convert-seeking religious institutions should not have a role in delivering U.S. aid. Washington’s aim must be to improve the lot of the poor in agriculture, education, and medicine, and must not be conducted in the traditional, alienating interventionist style meant to remake poor foreigners in our image.

(I hasten to add I would oppose any U.S. taxpayer money being spent on foreign aid until needy Americans are helped. As more jobs are the key to resolving so many problems for poor Americans, I would say no taxes should be spent on foreign aid until the national unemployment rate is in the 4-to-5-percent range or below for 12 consecutive months.)

The U.S. private sector clearly has the ability to play a great role in aiding the foreign poor. Excess wealth in parts of the private sector is enormous and could be used to aid the poor — at home and abroad. Again, private-sector aid should benefit poor Americans first, but once that goal is met the money could be shifted abroad and delivered via the same mechanisms that deliver public-sector aid.

Currently, too much private-sector foreign aid is delivered by organizations dedicated to secularizing, women’s-rights-izing, and democratizing foreigners, and their hectoring approach to the foreign poor negates much of what otherwise would be the positive impact of American aid. For those who doubt this reality, note the negative impact on Afghan attitudes of the bar-brothel-and-libertine culture the UN and Western NGOs have brought to Kabul.

One other American “sector” may have a role to play in foreign aid and that is the religious sector. America’s churches, synagogues, and mosques are — so scripture has it — engines for helping the poor. But when traveling around America these days it seems that many religious leaders have forgotten the poor — domestic and foreign — and instead are working to: build mammoth facilities for worship; create propagandizing television networks, radio stations, and websites; and elect candidates who will pander to them. Even my own little parish in northern Virginia devoted unconscionable sums of money to buying fancy new pews, building a new altar with imported Italian marble, and cultivating gardens on church grounds, rather than sending the funds to the orphanage for children of AIDS victims the parish sponsors in East Africa.

Perhaps the focus of America’s religions will turn back to the poor here and overseas. I doubt it, but there is danger even if they do. All major religions proselytize, and all missionaries — unless working in a country dominated by their faith — are agents of alienation and violence. That each religion has the legal right and, in its eyes, a divinely assigned duty to seek converts is undeniable. But when America’s religions go abroad to proselytize in places where other major religions dominate, they should be entirely on their own, with no ties to the U.S. public sector, and no expectation that any U.S. entity is going to ride to their rescue when they get in a jam for seeking converts.

The foregoing outlines what I think the U.S. role in foreign aid ought to be. We should try to help the poor who need help without trying to change their culture or faith. If we cannot supply aid in a no-strings manner, we should not supply it all, because delivering aid with demands for cultural/religious change attached only earns hatred for America. And we must never intervene to impose democracy and women’s/human rights, or to secularize non-secular societies, draw new borders, stop civil wars, or remove leaders we find odious but who pose no threat to us. These actions — like foreign aid with tight strings attached — can only lead to unnecessary wars and so to unnecessary threats to liberty in America.

How many non-elite Americans do you think can find “Darfur” on a map? How many of the same tax-paying folks do you think want the U.S. government to spend money on the poor, hungry, unemployed, and illiterate in Darfur, when there are tens of thousands of Americans living in the same conditions at home? And how many non-elite Americans want to worsen America’s war with Islam?

My own hunch is that: (a) not many could find Darfur on a map; (b) few would want to send their taxes abroad when so many Americans need assistance; and (c) even fewer would want more war with Islam abroad and at home.

Well guess what, all of these non-elite Americans are fresh out of luck. With the U.S. government and such scintillating strategic thinkers as George Clooney, Don Cheadle, Angelina Jolie, and Mia Farrow in the lead, the West is about to help rip Darfur and the rest of Muslim Sudan’s oil-rich southern territories out of the country and create an independent, largely Christian state.

Under the guise of a “referendum” (set for 9 January 2011) that will be observed by a 110-person European Union team of imperial busybodies, Sudan’s primarily Christian south will be severed from the Sudanese nation-state, setting the stage for a continuation of the decades old Muslim-Christian Sudanese civil war. The difference will be that henceforth — as is occurring in Somalia — the U.S. and the West will be obliged to protect the new nation they created by theft and oil lust with diplomacy, funding, arms, military training, and eventually troops.

And what is America’s interest in becoming involved to the hilt and inextricably in Sudan? What is so vital to the United States in Sudan that President Obama is pressing the leaders of Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, and the other states of the African Union to support “our intense interest in having a successful referendum” — read that as “our intense interest in carving up Sudan to suit our imperial purposes and corner access to Sudanese oil.” (As an aside, one must admit Rudyard Obama is nothing if not an aggressive proponent of improving — that is, “Westernizing” — the lives of “our little brown brothers,” although the blatant theft of Islamic land is a rather odd component for the kinder and more gentle “Muslim outreach program” Obama announced in Cairo and Jakarta.)

The answer is that Obama, our bipartisan political elite, the mainstream media, and the rich, immature, libertine, and anti-U.S. Hollywood set lead by Clooney, et al, want to feel good about themselves by doing “good” for foreigners. For these elite U.S. citizens-of-the-world, ordinary Americans and their kids can starve, freeze, live on the streets, fail to find work, and remain illiterate forever. In essence, they can rot while Washington spends their taxes on Darfur — a place where absolutely no genuine U.S. interest is at stake.

Now, that’s a bit harsh and in one aspect even wrong. The Democrats and Republicans must ensure that ordinary Americans are kept well-off enough to keep having children who will join the U.S. military that will be used to fight the wars their interventionism start. And there can be no doubt that Washington’s leading role in championing Darfur’s secession from Sudan will intensify America’s war with Islam and the evolving Islam-vs-Christianity war in Africa. And, not surprisingly, the ever-adept Osama bin Laden began setting this trap for the United States over the course of the last decade.

Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Abu Yaha al-Libi, one of al-Qaeda’s leading theologians, have spoken publicly and on multiple occasions about Washington’s intention to intervene in Somalia and Sudan to halt the spread of Sunni Islam in the Horn of Africa; to eliminate the Islamic regime in Sudan; to champion the spread of Christianity in Africa; and to ensure Sudan’s massive oil reserves are in pro-U.S. hands. Obama’s administration, with full Republican support, is about to make these three al-Qaeda leaders appear omniscient to the Muslim world.

When more non-Muslim troops arrive in Somalia and the 9 January referendum divides Sudan, three things will be clear to Muslims worldwide.

1. Under the Bush administration, Washington supported the destruction of Somalia’s Islamic Courts regime via an invasion by the army of Christian Ethiopia. Under Bush and now under Obama, Washington supports a non-Islamic, UN-mandated government which is seen by Somalis as illegitimate and holds a small portion of the capital of Mogadishu only because it is supported by a non-Muslim, UN-backed intervention force from Uganda and Burundi. Obama and other Western leaders support the expansion of that force from 8,000 men to 12,000. Needless to say, the size of anti-UN, Somali Islamist forces is growing; al-Qaeda’s footprint in Somalia is spreading and solidifying; and Islamist militancy on Africa’s east coast is intensifying.
2. As Obama and other Western leaders join together to carve out a new Christian state from Sudanese territory, they are simultaneously taking from Muslim Sudan most of its southern oil-producing region. Today, Sudan is Sub-Saharan Africa’s third largest oil producer, and the sale of that oil produces much of the country’s income ($4.4 billion in 2010). Thus the West is not only intent on depriving Sudan of about half of its territory, but it intends to punish the Islamic regime in Khartoum by giving control over Sudan’s oil reserves to a new Christian state. Confronted by this threat in the south and the growing Western-backed, anti-Islamist military presence to the east in Somalia, it is not surprising that Sudan’s President Bashir has promised to further Islamicize the remaining rump of his country. This act is certain to create more — not less — Muslim-Christian fighting in Sudan, and to bring in more aid from al-Qaeda and like-minded groups, as well as from countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuawit, and the UAE.
3. The creation of new largely Christian state in southern Sudan also will be seen by Muslims as yet another example of the theft by other faiths of historically Muslim land. Whether it is Kashmir, now held by India 60 years after the UN promised a plebiscite to see if Muslim Kashmiris want to be part of that Hindu state; the extraction of East Timor from Muslim Indonesia by a UN-led military force to create a new Christian state; the growing presence of Christian forces in Muslim Somalia; or the occupation of Muslim Palestine by Christian-backed Jews to create a Jewish state, coming events in Sudan will again underline the Muslim world’s perception that its lands are always ripe for picking by other the politicians and military forces of other faiths.

Thus, the Western-led secession of southern Sudan will again validate much of what bin Laden and other Islamist leaders have told Muslims to expect from their Christian, Jewish, and Hindu enemies: invasion, occupation, annexation, and loss of natural resources, especially oil. And given that perception is always reality, this assessment by much of the Muslim world will lead directly to enhancing the popular appeal of a jihad that has as one of its key missions the recovery of stolen Muslim lands.

At day’s end, Washington’s sponsorship of or participation in Western and/or UN-led interventionism in Africa drains the U.S. treasury; gives the needs of foreigners priority over those of Americans; causes more warfare; and negates what has been called the “proper influence of our republican example.”

And in the case of the Obama administration’s support for expanding the UN-led occupation of Muslim Somalia and the carving up of Muslim Sudan, U.S. interventionism will lead to more Islamist attacks in the United States. It is well known that U.S.-citizen Muslim Somalis are increasingly involved in planning and participating in such actions in America and abroad because of their anger over the Western-backed UN intervention in Somalia. Now Washington, by championing the theft of half the territory and most of the energy resources of Muslim Sudan under a referendum designed to create a new Christian state, will provide the impetus and justification for similar actions by U.S.-citizen Muslim Sudanese.

This seems a high price for ordinary Americans to pay just so Obama, McCain, the Clintons, and the spoiled Hollywood libertines can feel good about themselves. After thanking Allah for their folly, I hope Osama has the good manners to send all of them a nice thank-you note.

I wrote the article below the broken line for the National Interest’s foreign affairs blog this week. The Islamist bombing in Sweden last Saturday (11 December 10) has again given the U.S. government and its allies a chance to understand that the primary motivation of Osama bin Laden al-Qaeda, their allies, and those they inspire is to be found in U.S. and Western policies and their impact in the Muslim world, and not in the West’s lifestyle and political systems. This is the umpteenth chance Western leaders have had to find this key insight in the aftermath of an Islamist attack. Will they take it?

Early evidence suggests they will not. Swedish officials are already authorizing increased funding to find out what “radicalizes” young Swedish Muslims, and have cried out against those who “poison the minds” of those young men. U.S. officials, too, have ratcheted up their tearful whining about the “increasing radicalization” of young, U.S.-citizen Muslims, and the Congress is about to hold hearings on “radicalization.” The latter, of course, will result in borrowing more money from the Chinese and the Saudis to greatly increase funding for the wizards of social science to “study” radicalization and its causes.

After a long and expensive study, the social-science frauds will find numerous untrue causes for radicalization — the intolerance of Americans, growing Islamophobia, the activities of the political right, etc, etc, etc. They will then draft a plan that yields substantial new spending and the further regulation of U.S. society according to the “progressive (read socialist)” ideals of the Democratic party and its acolytes who dominate the U.S. academy.

Armed with these findings, Washington will march forward to “perfect” U.S. society to make it more welcoming to Muslims, while al-Qaeda and its allies continue to grow in numbers and military capability because their motivation is based on the foreign policies that our genius social scientists and august political leaders argue have nothing to do with the war the Islamists are waging at us. And so we will continue down the road toward economic ruin, increasing Islamist attacks in the United States, and ultimate defeat.

How can it be that a very dead Islamist bomber educated at the UK’s Bedfordshire University is so much very much smarter than Bill Clinton (Yale and Oxford), George Bush (Yale), and Barack Obama (Columbia and Harvard)? Simple, the dead Islamist saw the world as it is, the others see a world that exists only in their arrogant and Ivy League-damaged minds.

Swedish Motivation

The configuration and physical impact of the bomb detonated last Saturday in Stockholm is best left for forensic specialists to evaluate. For the rest of us, the most important aspect of the event is that it constitutes yet another warning for the unctuously self-righteous, effeminate and oblivious West that Islamist attacks are based on what we do, not who we are and how we think.

Taymour Abdul Wahab, the dead bomber, claimed his attack was motivated by Sweden’s contribution of five hundred troops to the U.S.-led Afghan war, the media’s printing of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and other Western actions harming Muslims. In other words, he was willing to die because of what he saw as lethal Western attacks on his faith and brethren; the bomber’s e-mail to police told non-Muslim Swedes: “Now your children, daughters and sons will die like our brothers and sisters are dying.” Wahab did not claim that he acted because of his hatred for women in the Swedish workplace, local elections in Stockholm or the existence of democracy in Scandinavia. Since 9/11, hatred for Western actions in the Muslim world invariably has been identified by Islamist attackers in the United States, Australia, Britain, and other European countries as their principle motivation. Now popularly referred to as “home-growns,” the great bulk of the evidence clearly shows these young Muslim males are motivated by the West’s policy toward Muslim peoples and nations.

In reality, the attackers have not been “home-grown” in the sense of being alienated or, to use the current social-(psuedo)science buzzword, “radicalized” by their immediate cultural and political surroundings. Most were educated, well-adjusted and functioning members of the Western state in which they lived. It was Western foreign policy vis-à-vis Muslim lands—what the Stockholm bomber called the “war being waged on Islam”—that nurtured their eagerness to defend Islam and Muslims by waging war at home. It was not the lifestyles of their fellow countrymen.

The endlessly repeated assertions by Western leaders and government-grant-hungry social scientists that the so-called home-grown attackers have been “radicalized” by Islamist scholars and preachers who are not orthodox Muslims, or by some disfigured, hijacked form of Islam, or by hatred for gender equality and liberty are nonsense elevated to common wisdom. They now have us fighting a “criminal” enemy that does not exist, rather than the growing, scripture-based and religiously motivated Islamist enemy that is on offer. We have ignored this reality and are near disaster because we take comfort in the reassuring but utterly false notion that the Islamists are limited in number, un-Islamic and basically criminals. As long as we continue to do so, the number of Muslims in the West—most, like the Stockholm bomber, with college degrees and jobs—willing to pick up arms or bombs will increase, and this proliferation will soon bring the war more fully and bloodily to Europe and the continental United States. And we will have only ourselves to blame. We have been too arrogant to listen to the enemy and understand his motivation; too self-blinded by political correctness to recognize the seriousness, religious legitimacy and breadth of his threat; and too effete to draft and then implement a strategic military-economic-political/diplomatic plan to decisively defeat him.

Finally, for terrorism “experts” who continue to insist that bin Laden and al-Qaeda are no longer influential players in the Islamists’ war, three items are worth noting. First, the Stockholm bomber named his son “Osama.” Second, an al-Qaeda-related website—Shumukh al-Islam—carried a statement by the al-Qaeda-backed Islamic State of Iraq’s War Minister Abu Sulieman al-Nasser identifying Wahab as the bomber, displaying Wahab’s picture, and announcing that the Stockholm attack is “only the beginning of a new era in our jihad … we will strike at the heart of Europe.” Third, both of his targets—a country supporting the U.S. in Afghanistan and those blaspheming the Prophet—have long been designated as key targets by Osama bin Laden.

At day’s end, sadly, Western governments are likely to ignore Wahab’s gift of a life ring, and instead will move quickly to waste inordinate amounts of taxpayer money on stoking up the useless de-radicalization programs advocated by social-science charlatans.

I wanted to draw attention here to a new book I have written. It is a biography entitled “Osama bin Laden” and will be published by Oxford University Press on 15 February 2011.

My intention in this book is to provide readers with a biography of Osama bin Laden based on what he himself has said and written; a book that is not dependent on what others have said about him.

I have compiled an archive of over 160 documents, totaling about 800 pages of material. These documents can be classed as primary sources; they are interviews with and speeches, statements, sermons, and essays by bin Laden.

In exploiting this material, I have tried to track the development of bin Laden as a person, as well as to analyze the development of his intellect; religious beliefs (and those who influence them); strategic, tactical, and media-related talents; leadership skills in the military, media, and political realms; and, most especially, the consistency — or lack thereof — of his words and deeds. I also have tried to show that bin Laden is hardly a ten-foot tall enemy. Rather, he is a man who has made many serious mistakes over the course of his life — more than a few of which ought to have cost him his life — but one who learned from those errors and repeatedly and unexpectedly survived to fight harder and more effectively another day.

At day’s end, the book is meant to provide readers with what the U.S. and most other Western governments have knowingly failed to provide for their citizens — the facts as they are presented in the primary sources pertaining to bin Laden. It is my goal to create a situation in which there is an easily accessible book that factually confronts the misleading concept pushed by the media, academics, and U.S. political leaders in both parties that the United States is being attacked because of how Americans think, vote, and live, rather than for what the U.S. government does in the Muslim world.

Whether or not Washington’s policies and actions in the Muslim world are in the national interests of the United States, and therefore should be maintained, is a question that must be decided by each U.S. citizen. But in making that decision — on which hinges the question of whether we are to fight a decades-long war with Islamists abroad and domestically — U.S. citizens ought to have access to the documents that accurately portray the Islamists’ motivation through the words and deeds of the man who is the main inspirer and most important symbol of the now-ongoing defensive jihad against the United States and its allies.

I hope it is needless to say that I look forward to comments — negative as well as positive — from readers of this site who have the inclination and opportunity to have a look through “Osama bin Laden” when it comes out.

For media inquiries please contact: Susan Fensten at Oxford University Press.

It is always my intent to use this site to discuss, criticize, and attack both Republicans and Democrats when they take any action that undermines the welfare of Americans, decreases the strength and security of the United States, or exposes the loyalty of U.S. officials and citizens to the interests of a foreign nation over those of the United States.

Every once in a while, however, an action by current Democratic officials is so in keeping with the party’s long history of racist, anti-human, and anti-American activities, that it takes your breath away. In the past, I have described the history of the Democratic Party as a continuing disgrace and deepening stain on American history; I have said that the Democratic Party should be seen as the party of the five “S’s”: Slavery, Secession (and civil war), Segregation, Socialism, and Slaughter (50 million aborted Americans … and counting).

Now we can add a “T” to those five “S’s” on the list of stellar “accomplishments” the Democratic Party has achieved over its long history. The “T” moves its record of disgrace beyond the realm of domestic affairs and back into the realm of Treason. I say “back into the realm of treason” because no one familiar with U.S. history will be surprised at the reinvigorated thirst to commit treason now being displayed by dozens Democrats.

Jefferson and his acolytes, for example, worked closely and covertly with the agents of France’s revolutionary regime to try to destroy President Washington’s neutrality policy and to foment public support for America joining France in its war against Britain. It is worth noting that Jefferson was serving as Washington’s Secretary of State at the time. And the list of politicians who formed the Confederate States of America in 1861, as well as the list of generals who led the Confederate armies in the attempt to destroy the Union and keep Blacks in slavery forever, were Democrats nearly to a man.

Now we have the boldest, most brazen example of the Democratic Party’s disloyalty since it bestowed secession and civil war on the American people 150 years ago. Thirty-nine Democrats in the federal legislature have signed a letter requesting a pardon for the convicted U.S.-citizen traitor and Israeli spy — Jonathan Pollard. Among the congressional champions of Pollard (listed below) are many of the same individuals who have assisted Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in publicly and repeatedly humiliating Obama and Biden; who pushed for a U.S. war against Iraq on Israel’s behalf; and who are now working with other U.S. citizen Israel-Firsters to support Netanyahu’s call for a U.S.-led war against Iran. (NB: Let me hasten to say that it is clear that this strain of disloyal, Israel-First sentiment runs just as strongly in the Republican Party, though the Republicans’ disloyalty seems limited to Israel and Saudi Arabia, and, in historical terms, the party certainly is the more loyal of the two. As shown by media coverage of the current batch of Wikileaks, abetting the Saudis’ funding for the Islamists who are killing our soldiers and Marines has long been a tradition for both Republicans and Democrats.)

Having just watched the Congress’s Ethics Committee publicly chastise the apparently illicit financial activities of Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), it seems entirely appropriate that said Committee begin an investigation of these thirty-nine dastardly legislators. These are men and women who believe a convicted traitor to the United States should be pardoned and released so he can relocate to Israel where he will be greeted with wild enthusiasm by the anti-American government and people of that country, both of which regard Pollard as a courageous hero for grievously damaging U.S. national security. In the long run, these 39 legislators — given their contempt for their oath of office — are far more ethically challenged and threatening to U.S. security than the greedy Mr. Rangel.

One word of caution is in order for the Ethics Committee. Many of the 39 pro-Pollard Democratic legislators may hold Israeli as well as U.S. passports. It may be wise for the Committee to seize both from the pro-Pollard 39 so they cannot flee to their country of first loyalty to avoid the public censure they absolutely merit.

The list of Jonathan Pollard supporters

• Barney Frank (D-MA)
• Gary L. Ackerman (D-NY)
• Robert E. Andrews (D-NJ)
• Shelley Berkley (D-NV)
• Robert A. Brady (D-PA)
• Danny Davis (D-IL)
• Theodore E. Deutsch (D-FL)
• Eliot L. Engel (D-NY)
• John J. Hall (D-NY)
• James A. Himes (D-CT)
• Maurice D. Hinchey (D-NY)
• Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX)
• Patrick J. Kennedy (D-RI)
• John Lewis (D-GA)
• Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY)
• Michael E. McMahon (D-NY)
• Gregory W. Meeks (D-NY)
• Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)
• Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC)
• John W. Olver (D-MA)
• Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ)
• Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ)
• Donald M. Payne (D-NJ)
• Charles B. Rangel (D-NY)
• Laura Richardson (D-CA)
• Janice D. Schakowsky (D-IL)
• Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-VA)
• Brad Sherman (D-CA)
• Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS)
• Edolphus Towns (D-NY)
• Niki Tsongas (D-MA)
• Henry A. Waxman (D-CA)
• Anthony Weiner (D-NY)

Below is an essay that I wrote this week for the electronic journal The Diplomat. The title above is my original title. The journal changed it in a way that made it look like I endorsed Wikileaks’ illegal activities. The editor agreed to change that title and it is now called “When Wikileaks meets U.S. policy” on The Diplomat’s site.

Not even Wikileaks can help: Obama’s inexplicable diplomacy in South Asia

As I write this, much of the international media is consumed with WikiLeaks’ gradual publication of a quarter-million US diplomatic reports. Why? Well first off, everyone likes to be let in on a secret, and if that secret involves acronyms like CIA, RAW, MI6, or ISI, the sexiness quotient skyrockets. That’s more or less just human nature. But the reports also provide grist for media publications—especially European ones—always eager to spread some dirt about the Americans. London’s Guardian, Madrid’s El Pais, and Paris’s Le Monde were fairly salivating as the documents’ release date approached, and wrote with near-orgasmic prose once publication began. Their behavior, too, was more or less predictable.

But the whirlwind around this batch of WikiLeaks leaks seems to point to a deeper concern among the public, one that stems from the increasing distance between the international reality they see and what their leaders describe to them. In recent years, the US public has had to hear its leaders repeatedly tell Americans that black was white: President Clinton said he didn’t know Monica (in the biblical sense) or who attacked the USS Cole in Yemen; President George W. Bush said Saddam was a WMD threat and then that there was no insurgency in Iraq; and President Barack Obama has said we are winning in Afghanistan, jihad is self-improvement (like stopping alcohol consumption) and that Indonesia is a model of sectarian tolerance. The latter is a particularly remarkable black-is-white moment—there have been times in Indonesia in recent years when you probably could have turned off your car lights and driven safely at night by the illumination provided by burning Christian churches.

This sort of regular and routine deceit has increased the suspicion of Americans—and I’d bet the suspicion of other nations’ publics, too—that they are being lied to about the conduct of governmental affairs. As a result, Americans seem to have become ever more eager to examine illegally acquired and disclosed “secret” information in the hope of finding out what’s really going on.

Obama’s recent diplomatic trip through Asia—and especially his visit to India—is a very good example of an exercise so counterintuitive to the average observer, and so counterproductive to US interests, that one can only assume the real goal of the sojourn has intentionally been buried deep in highly classified messages not meant to be seen by the average citizen.

Preparing to leave Washington as the US-led war effort in Afghanistan is verging on collapse, Obama made clear that he wouldn’t visit Pakistan. Whatever one thinks of Pakistan’s track record as an ally, the truth is that the logistical viability of the US-NATO Afghan war effort depends on Pakistan keeping open overland supply routes from Karachi and Peshawar into Afghanistan. It also depends on Pakistan’s military doing something to hurt al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in the border area, or at least not doing much to help them. These two facts alone, one would think, would have merited a day’s visit to Islamabad to protect vital US interests. So why didn’t they? I can’t think of a reason.

Once in India, Obama behaved as if the nature of the Pakistan-India relationship was comparable with that of the US-Canada relationship, with just a few more rough patches. Apparently unaware of what can only be described as the paranoia and zero-sum approach with which each nation assesses the other, the oblivious Obama called for “progress” on the Kashmir conflict, probably leaving both New Delhi and Islamabad wondering whose ox was to be gored to afford progress.

But after this opening bit of even-handedness, Obama tilted toward India with reckless abandon. He called for greater Indo-US economic, military and nuclear cooperation; praised India—but not Pakistan—for its counter-terrorism efforts; recommended new contracts between India’s military and US arms manufacturers; and urged the expansion of India’s expensive but doomed commitment in Afghanistan. Obama finished up by unequivocally endorsing a seat for India on the UN Security Council. (Imagine the questions and comments Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff General Kiyani will face from his corps commanders at their next meeting.)

So one must again ask: Why were all of these things on Obama’s New Delhi script? At this moment in history it hardly seems in the interests of the United States to tell Pakistan that its place as a US ally ends when the Afghan war is lost, and yet this is exactly what Obama was effectively doing. Likewise, he signalled Washington’s willingness to join Israel in helping to qualitatively improve India’s military capabilities, while encouraging New Delhi to continue and expand its presence in Afghanistan, which will do nothing but increase Pakistan’s perception that its security demands that it ally itself with forces bent on restoring the Taliban’s Islamic emirate. (Another anomaly is why Obama thinks long-term Indo-US relations will benefit from pushing India into a greater Afghan commitment when he knows—as documented in Bob Woodward’s recent book, Obama’s Wars—that the United States and NATO have lost the Afghan war and that Washington will depart and leave India to its own devices.)

Each of these US positions will, of course, be seen by Pakistan’s generals as deepening the strategic threat posed by India. And if driving forward Pakistan’s paranoia over US support for India’s aspirations for regional hegemony wasn’t enough, Obama’s championing of a Security Council seat for India and offering to strengthen New Delhi’s military will have been seen as a threat by Beijing.

To top it all off, the India visit will have done Obama no good at all in the Muslim world. With many Muslims already viewing the United Nations as an imperialistic tool that the “Christian West” uses to advance its and Israel’s interests, Obama has put the US government on record as approving a Security Council seat for polytheistic Hindu India. With no “Islamic” Security Council seat mentioned by Obama (or indeed any other major world leader), the Muslim world will continue to believe that the UN is evolving in a markedly anti-Islamic direction. Obama’s praise for India’s democratic development and societal tolerance, meanwhile, will strike Muslims as signifying Washington’s satisfaction with an Indian society that positions Muslims as second-class citizens who lag significantly behind in education, income, life expectancy and access to higher education and government employment, and who also are confronted by a limited but virulent anti-Muslim Hindu nationalist movement.

The US and Indian media have trumpeted the business contracts resulting from Obama’s visit—it’s said they’ll yield 50,000 US jobs (not enough to make even a small dent in US unemployment)—but beyond that achievement there seems nothing but downsides for the United States: a fully alienated Pakistan, likely to increase support for the Taliban; a dicey bet on great economic returns from friendship with an India plagued by corruption; an enduring and resentful underclass of Hindus and Muslims; numerous domestic insurgencies beyond that in Kashmir; and an offended China at a time when the US economy is dependent on Chinese loans for debt-funding.

All of which brings us back to the public’s interest in WikiLeaks’ documents and other illicitly acquired and published ‘secret’ materials. Could Obama really have gone to India to intentionally achieve such a long list of negative results?

In an attempt to reconcile the contrast between the obvious negative reality of the India visit based on the information available to the public, and Washington’s description of it as having yielded stunning results, one is faced with only two explanations: (1) the real purpose, goals, and accomplishments of Obama’s visit are secret or (2) Obama and his lieutenants are singularly incompetent in designing and conducting a foreign policy that serves near- and long-term US interests.

Frankly, I’m leaning toward the latter. But I suppose it’s at least possible that some time in the future the maestro of WikiLeaks—if he’s not in prison—will steal and publish US or Indian government documents that show how the visit was actually a brilliant substantive success.

Until then, though, we’ll have to wait and see if, as Washington now says, black really is white.

Michael F. Scheuer is the former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit and best-selling author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terrorism (Potomac Books, 2004).

• I wrote this for the National Interest’s blog last week and though it might be of interest to readers of this site.

In Promised Land, Crusader State, perhaps the most brilliant, erudite, and lastingly relevant book on U.S. foreign policy, Professor Walter A. McDougall writes:

“American Exceptionalism as our Founders conceived it was defined by what America was, at home. Foreign policy existed to defend, not define, what America was. In given circumstances all sorts of tactics might be expedient save only one that defeated its purpose by eroding domestic liberty and unity.”

Today, sadly, it is a commonplace verging on truism to say U.S. foreign policy in the Muslim world under President Obama and his three predecessors is “eroding domestic liberty and unity.” As this is written, for example, we are seeing the impact of “National Opt Out Day,” as Americans react to treatment at airports usually reserved for visits to gynecologists and proctologists. Their anger is real and apparently durable, but their understanding of the main factor reducing their “domestic liberty and unity” is uncertain at best. They seem unaware that TSA’s inspection regime is not only the result of al-Qaeda’s actions but also of the Muslim world’s negative reaction to the prolonged and unbridled interventionism of their own government.

The invasive — a new synonym for both “absurd” and “prurient”? — TSA doctrine deployed since the failed suicide attack on a U.S. airliner last Christmas and the recent al-Qaeda operation to bomb cargo aircraft are only the most recent examples of the hatred America earns when U.S. political leaders — contra the Founders — attempt to define America by what we do abroad. Messrs Obama, G.W. Bush, Clinton, and G.H.W. Bush have each been advocates, in form if not in name, of what the elder Mr. Bush called the “New World Order,” an effort to impose Western, capitalist, and secular values and structures on non-Westerners as part of what Mr. Kipling would have aptly described as the “white man’s burden” of making “our little brown brothers” just like us.

In the Muslim world, Washington’s four-president-long campaign of making good Americans out of Muslims has seen a variety of interesting programs, among them Mr. G.H.W. Bush’s positing and advocacy of America’s right to re-order the world, including Muslim countries; Mr. Clinton‘s attempt to force Afghanistan’s Mullah Omar to install Western-style women’s rights; Mr. G.W. Bush’s wars to impose secular democracy on Islamic states; Mr. Obama’s lying definition of jihad as solely an agenda for personal improvement, like Alcoholics Anonymous; and urgings by all four that it would be wise to edit Allah’s revelations in the Koran so as to delete all that troublesome, archaic stuff about a Muslim’s responsibility to defend his faith and brethren.

What this amounts to, of course, is a Muslim-world perception — and one not limited to al-Qaeda and other Islamists — that Washington is waging a rather intense cultural war on the Islamic civilization, as well as an anti-Islamic, military/foreign-policy war in the form of the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq; unqualified support for Israel; and the protection of multiple Muslim tyrants and police states.

Obviously, all these presidential initiatives amount to an intentional use of U.S. foreign policy to define America’s worth by what we do abroad. More women voting, more secular democracies, and a defanged Koran that more resembles the mamby-pamby substance of modern Christian doctrine would all be good things in the American mind and would allow Americans — or at least their governing elite — to feel good about what they have accomplished. And it must be stressed that there is nothing inherently evil in these presidential initiatives, though their inherent ignorance of non-Western cultures merits deep worry. The problem is simply that they have caused our present war with Islam, and so have led to the defensive attacks by al-Qaeda and other Islamists which, in turn, have led to government actions that have prompted “National Opt Out Day” and are reducing “domestic liberty and unity.”

As Professor McDougall proves in his timeless book, the Founders always yield wisdom, liberty, and safety for Americans when we take time to pat them down. Indeed, the Founders’ work suggests the current anger of everyday Americans should actually be directed at themselves. They, after all, have elected the last four interventionist presidents who have waged what most Muslims perceive as a cultural, military, and foreign-policy war against Islam meant to remake Muslims in contemporary America’s militantly secular image. McDougall cites a sane Arkansan named Fulbright as follows:

“Americans must always doubt the ability of the United States or any other Western country … to create stability where there is chaos, the will to fight where there is defeatism, democracy where there is no tradition of it, and honest government where corruption is almost a way of life.”

Today’s angry Americans, then, ought to look in the mirror and see that they are responsible for electing interventionist presidents who are reducing domestic liberty and unity, and that the simple and correct antidote for that deterioration is to stop voting for interventionists who define America’s worth by interfering in foreign cultures they deem odious but do not understand. Patting down the Founders, as McDougall says, will show Americans that the Founders “flatly denied that the United States ought to be in the business of changing the world, lest it only change itself, for the worse.”

North Korea

The North Korean military’s artillery attack on a South Korean island this week — and act of war — again highlights why non-interventionists cannot be Pacifists. Whether or not the U.S. alliance with South Korea is a good idea, it is a fact, and the North’s acts of war against a U.S. alliance partner are intolerable.

What to do? I suggested on FOX News this week that the U.S. navy immediately be ordered to sink as much of North Korea’s navy as possible, and also destroy its naval installations. This is an appropriate response to two North Korean acts of war — counting the North’s earlier sinking of a boat of the South Korean navy — against a U.S. ally that, unlike Israel or Britain, has never tried to drag us into war.

Alas, and as always, it seems neither President Obama nor the U.S. military had prepared to attack North Korea’s military after a second act of war. As this morning’s papers show, Obama has only just sent an aircraft carrier toward Korean waters, and that as a signal to North Korea — and China. Signal? China? China has long abetted the North Korean pirate regime, but does anyone really believe Beijing would risk war with the United States over a smashed North Korean navy? I think the answer to that question has two parts: (a) not if the U.S. Navy was prepared and had struck immediately, presenting Beijing with a fait acompli; and, (2) a much more serious Sino-U.S. confrontation would develop if Obama now authorizes a retaliatory attack on North Korea, as the Chinese have had time to lay out their pro-North Korea position on the attack and the Western media — especially the BBC and CNN — are abetting North Korea by describing the incident as an “exchange of artillery fire,” rather than a North Korean act of war.

The net result, I think, is the North Koreans probably will get away Scot free on this one. And aside from the dead South Korean Marines and civilians, the United States will be the biggest loser in the affair. The Obama administration has once again shown one of the few loyal U.S. allies, as well as the likes of North Korea, China, Iran, al-Qaeda, other Islamist groups, the Taliban (Afghan and Pakistani), and Russia that America is a muscle-bound power that is deathly embarrassed by its strength and afraid to use it to the extent needed. Both allies and enemies will take note; the former losing trust in U.S. reliability and the latter preparing to push the envelope a bit farther in harming U.S. interests, thereby increasing the possibility of a bigger confrontation with one or more of them in the future.

Worse for Americans, Washington’s failure to quickly paste the North Koreans will further fuel the resurgence of U.S. Neoconservatives who want a full war with North Korea, Iran, and each of the enemies Israel has so studiously earned for itself over past decades. The Neocons will brand Obama a physical coward and a communist sympathizer for refusing to stand up to North Korea and China, and their claims will find traction not only among their usual acolytes but also among Americans who either resent or are just plain tired of seeing the United States and its military humiliated by foreign powers and groups.

This, it seems to me, is always the contemporary non-interventionist’s dilemma: America lives in a world formed by a de facto interventionist coalition of U.S. political leaders from both parties and their academic and media camp-followers, and so now has a set of genuine national-security interests, treaty obligations, and perceived moral commitments produced by the coalition’s decades of intervention. A sane foreign policy — that is, a non-interventionist one — obviously would eliminate these interests, obligations, and perceived commitments as quickly and safely as possible.

But until Tea Party members are sworn in, and we can see if they will demand that America comes home as major part of the price for their legislative cooperation, the country remains in the interventionists’ thrall. So for now, the best non-interventionists can do is to seek to constrain the Neocon-led interventionists, even if that paradoxically means support for timely military preemption or retribution that might just forestall greater intervention leading to war.

And, in my mind, when Obama failed to retaliate for the attack on our South Korean ally, he opened the door for a more serious chance of a major war — which will be exploited by the Neocons — the next time the North Korean military attacks South Korea, which it surely will.

Jonathan Pollard

There seems to be growing support in the media and among some federal legislators for the release of Mr. Pollard and his subsequent transfer to Israel, the country which used Mr. Pollard’s Jewish heritage and venality to persuade him to commit treason against the United States and his fellow citizens. While releasing a convicted traitor seems too heinous to consider, the Obama administration’s willingness to bribe Israel with everything from F-35 strike fighters to cash infusions leaves open the chance of Mr. Pollard being released.

The Pollard problem has been with us for quite a while, and I think it now should be settled. I believe Mr. Pollard should be released — after he has been garroted and drawn-and-quartered. Then, given our current straightened economic conditions, Mr. Pollard can be shipped to Israel in one of the U.S. Post Office’s flat-rate shipping boxes in care of Prime Minister Netanyahu. The brigand will have his spy and the problem will be ended.

The third issue of Inspire, al-Qaeda-in-the-Arab-Peninsula’s English-language magazine, was released last night and is devoted al-Qaeda’s recent attempt to destroy cargo aircraft with package bombs. [1] The magazine explains that the failed attack was called “Operation Hemorrhage” and is one part of a broader offensive meant to cause “maximum losses to the U.S. economy” and major damage to the “aviation industry, an industry that is vital for trade and transportation between the United States and Europe.”

The magazine describes an operation fully in keeping with Osama bin Laden’s strategy of trying to drive the U.S. economy to bankruptcy. Inspire’s writers claim that economic damage is more important than human casualties at this point in al-Qaeda’s war on the United States. They explain that the bombs that were placed on the cargo aircraft cost just $4,200, and so their discovery before detonation did no damage to al-Qaeda’s treasury or capabilities but, even in failure, exacted major security-expenditures by the United States and other countries. In fact, the writers note,

“To bring down the U.S. [there is no] need to strike big. In an environment of security phobia that is sweeping America, [it is] more feasible to stage smaller attacks that involve less players and less time to launch and [will] circumvent [the] security barriers America worked so hard to erect.”

The magazine also takes time to gloat at the British and — implicitly — the U.S. and other governments allied with it. “The British government,” Inspire notes,

“said if [an ink] toner weighs more than 500g[rams] it won’t be allowed aboard a plane. Who is the genius who came up with this suggestion? Do they think we have nothing to send but printers?”

Inspire argues that the current state of al-Qaeda’s war against the United States demands a “strategy of attacking the enemy with smaller, more frequent operations … [a] thousand cuts.” Toward this end, the magazine says that the cargo-plane operation marks the end of the first phase of a “multi-phased operation.”

“[The] next phase [is] to disseminate technical details of [the] device to the mujahideen around the world to use from their countries. [The] following phase would be for us to use our connections to mail such packages from countries below [the West’s] radar and to use similar devices in Western countries. … American interests will remain our target.”

The foregoing is a partial and initial look at al-Qaeda’s description of the new anti-U.S. campaign it initiated by placing bombs on cargo aircraft. Al-Qaeda clearly recognizes that the mujahideen invariably defeat the United States and its allies even when their operations fail or are stopped by Western security services.

In the present case, al-Qaeda invested $4,200 in a failed attack that yielded panic across two continents; tens of millions of dollars in new, security-related government expenditures; doubts about the viability of detection technologies that Western governments have paid billions of dollars for since 09/11; and a slowing impact on the worldwide air-cargo industry.

And in the United States, these negatives come on top of a rising tide of anti-Washington rage among American travelers who face a choice between being photographed nude or sexually molested at airports by federal civil servants. This anger toward and distrust of the federal government was bought by al-Qaeda for the few thousand dollars it invested in a failed suicide bomber at Christmas 2009.

While these two failed al-Qaeda activities keep paying huge dividends for the Islamist war effort — for an investment of less than $7,500 — President Obama, his terrorism czar John Brennan, and General Petraeus continue to assure Americans that the only route to safety lies in protecting Afghan civilians and winning the enemy’s hearts and minds.

May God help us all.

1. This article is based on excerpts of a copy of Inspire acquired and disseminated by a private-sector firm called The IntelCenter, which is based in northern Virginia. In my view, The IntelCenter is without peer in the private sector in terms of the timely acquisition and distribution of statements by al-Qaeda, its affiliates, and its allies. The even-handedness of the firm’s translations of non-English-language jihadi materials is likewise without peer.

President Obama and Secretary of State [Hillary] Clinton are publicly bribing Israel to halt settlement construction for 90 days in return for 20 F-35 joint strike fighter aircraft, valued at about $3 billion dollars. In other words, Israel, a gangster-ridden, theocratic sandpit at the far end of the Mediterranean, has demonstrated its ability to extort almost anything it wants, whenever it wants it, from the greatest power the world has ever known.

Indeed, Israel now has a chit worth at least $3 billion dollars it can call in whenever it’s a bit short of U.S. taxpayer money. Netanyahu and his cabinet — with full support from the U.S.-citizen-staffed, Israel-First Fifth Column — can simply make noises every 90-days about building more settlement homes and then sit back and wait for the next bribe to arrive. Who knows, maybe an aircraft carrier or a half-dozen nuclear submarines will be in the next bag of swag demanded by Israel and the Israel-Firsters? Presumably Netanyahu has a pretty long shopping list of material items he wants U.S. citizens to pay for, as well as foreign policy goals for which he wants U.S. troops to fight and die.

Perhaps some order can be put into this process so U.S. taxpayers know how much Washington will send to the doomed-by-the Neocons’-Iraq-war Israeli state before it is washed away by the tide Sunni Salafist mujahideen rolling west from the Gulf and South Asia through Iraq. Why not put that miserable little cur Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) — whose loyalty to Israel over the United States is as lethal to Americans as Anwar al-Awalki’s disloyalty — in charge of the project. President Obama, in a spirit of bipartisanship, can name Rep. Cantor “Czar for bribing Israel and making sure more U.S. troops get killed by Islamists.”

Rep. Cantor should be assigned two tasks in this era of economic distress, one to keep track of the cost of bribing Israel and the other to keep count of the dead U.S. soldiers and Marines that will result therefrom. It’s the least he can do given that he has proven the felony provisions of the Logan Act — meant to protect Americans against being sold out to foreigners by fellow citizens — do not apply to him or other pro-Israel U.S.-citizens who meet privately with Israel’s prime minister and deliver who knows what information and promises from the Israel-First suborned U.S. Congress. (NB: Cantor meets Netanyahu on 10 November 2010 and three days later Obama and Clinton offer Israel 20 F-35 strike-fighter aircraft. Coincidences happen, I guess.)

Beyond the sickening spectacle of Obama and Clinton panting in eagerness to bribe Israel, and the brazen public display of disloyalty by Cantor and other Israel-Firsters — Democrats and Republicans — we also see ol’ “America-will-never-be-at-war-with-Islam” Barack again proving he has lied to the Islamic world. With the F-35 bribe for Israel on the table for inspection, 1.4 billion Muslims will see that Obama’s “Muslim outreach” program, as described in his Cairo and Indonesia speeches, is not genuine and will not slow Washington’s bipartisan ardor for supplying Israel with more and better weapons with which to start wars and kill Muslims.

Obama is a curious man: Extremely well-educated and extraordinarily unable — or unwilling — to see how one of his actions negatively impacts a variety of other U.S. interests. In this case, he does not seem to realize that the war-encouraging substance of his bribe to Israel for the temporarily cessation of settlement construction will look to Muslims much like a U.S. declaration of war on the Islamic world. And that this is the rule not the exception in his behavior is shown by his recent performance in India, where he declared a “strategic partnership” with New Delhi at the cost of driving Pakistan further into Saudi and Chinese hands and making sure that Pakistan’s survival is now tied to the success of those fighting to drive both the U.S.-NATO coalition and India from Afghanistan. At day’s end, perhaps a complete inability to integrate obviously related subjects is an Ivy-League education’s main product.

Finally, the decision by Obama and Clinton to bribe Israel at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of $3 billion ought to be juxtaposed with a commercial now playing on U.S. television. The commercial claims 15-percent of American children live in hunger and asks viewers to donate to a fund to be used to eradicate this problem by 2015.

By 2015? Why not in six months? Why not re-appropriate the $6 billion going to Israel ($3 billion annual aid and the F-35s) and the nearly $6 billion that goes to the Palestinian Authority, Turkey, and Egypt and wipe out childhood hunger by mid-2011? I have never believed the Founders even remotely intended the constitution to authorize the federal government to reach into U.S. citizens’ pockets and steal money to give to foreign leaders, many of whom are gangsters, corrupt kings, tyrants, or fundamentally anti-American. Does anyone believe it is possible that the Founders would have supported paying $12 billion to foreign governments at any time, let alone when 15% of American kids are hungry? Maybe someone should ask Obama, Clinton, and Cantor for their views on this issue. Maybe that someone should be a hungry nine-year-old kid.