Michael F. Scheuer, Adjunct Professor of Security Studies, Georgetown University
Biography provided by participant
New York Times and Washington Post bestselling author Michael Scheuer is the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden Unit. He resigned from CIA in November 2004 after nearly two decades of experience in covert action and national security issues related to Afghanistan, South Asia, and the Middle East. He is the author of the new book, Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq (Free Press, 2008). He also wrote Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terrorism (Potomac Books, 2004), and Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America (Potomac Books, 2002).
Scheuer's writings also have appeared in the Atlantic, Washington Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Antiwar.com, New York Times, American Conservative, Dallas Morning News, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, India Today, Washington Post, the National Interest, and the American Interest. Scheuer has been featured on such national television news programs as Meet the Press, Nightline, 60 Minutes, the O'Reilly Factor, and the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, as well as on international television news programs in Britain, Australia, France, Spain, Japan, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, China, and Germany. He has been interviewed for broadcast media and documentaries -- including Frontline, the History Channel, the BBC, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, and PBS -- and has been the focus of print media worldwide.
Scheuer holds a B.A., two M.A.'s, and a Ph. D. He is an Adjunct Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University and a consultant for CBS's 60 Minutes.
Of course we should be training new Lawrences. But their aim should not only to be to understand our Islamist enemies, but to understand them in a way that helps us gain access to kill as many of them as possible. Realistically, though, hundreds of new Lawrences would not be able to make a dent in growing Islamist numbers. That would require a host of changes in U.S. foreign policy -- re oil, Arab tyrants, Israel, etc. -- which would, with time, begin to slow Islamist growth. Once such changes are in place and begin to undermine the Islamists' center-of-gravity and major motivation -- status quo U.S.… Read more
There are some members of every ethnic and religious group in the United States who are in someway a threat to U.S. national security. This has always been true, and we as society have coped adequately with the problem over our history. Still, I believe that there at least three groups in U.S. society that will be of growing concern in the coming decades primarily because they are either opposed to U.S. political life and foreign policy on religious grounds, or believe they should dictate and control U.S. foreign policy on religious grounds. On the Muslim side of the coin, there is no objective rationale for believing… Read more
How is the Obama administration doing? Well for having a president with no relevant political or foreign policy experience; a terrorism Czar who made his CIA career by endlessly saying "Yes, Mr. Tenet, you are a genuis"; a National Security Adviser who has forgotten that he was Marine and is happy to let a marooned U.S. Army twist slowly in the wind until it dies in Afghanistan; a vice president who thinks the Cold War is still at its height because he never stops talking long enough to learn the Wall fell 20 years ago; an Attorney General who calls Americans cowards and… Read more
The U.S. government's goal should be to help deflect the Islamists' war back onto their main enemies. Toward that laudable end, we should: 1.) Honestly accept the obvious: The Islamists are motivated to wage war on the United States because of what Washington does in the Muslim world, and not because of who Americans are or how they think, behave, and live at home. 2.) Recognize that nearly 80-percent of the world's Muslims believe U.S. foreign policy is intended to undermine or destroy Islam. 3.) Armed with 1 and 2 above, we can begin to change the foreign policies that are no longer in U.S. national… Read more
Mrs. Clinton's pathetic performance in Pakistan today underscores that neither she, the State Department, nor President Obama is what America needs in wartime. Clinton and almost all of our governing elite are worthless caricatures of a leaders so long as they fail to make the protection of the United States the single basis from which all policy flows. Like a hectoring school marm, Mrs. Clinton today told the Pakistanis that she could not believe they did not know the location of Osama bin Laden. Whether or not the Pakistanis know, the reality is that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are America's… Read more
Comments on this question seem focused on process and style -- the sainted Mrs. Clinton designing a "new diplomacy" as did the lamentable Woodrow Wilson, or Team Obama behaving as did the FDR administration, although how that's possible is a question given that FDR had more skill, guile, intelligence, and political savvy then the whole gang of aging, 1960's adolescents now ensconced in the White House. The truth, I think, is that Mrs. Clinton is more of the same: an interventionist and a bully when it comes to weak countries; a hypocrite when it comes to tyranny; a surrenderist when it… Read more
For what it is worth, I believe Obama receiving the Nobel Prize is very important because it shows all Americans the depth of anti-Americanism in Europe, as well as the lethally Pollyanish belief of much of the Western world's elite in the power of words unmatched by deeds. Obama has done as much to weaken U.S. national security and domestic cohesion as any one in recent memory. From telling Americans that we are no longer at war with Islamists, to dismantling the capture-interrogate-incarcerate system that offered America a modicum of effective defense against the Islamists, to marooning a too-small army in Afghanistan, to pushing us ever closer to bankruptcy, to keeping America… Read more
Yes, the partisan nature of foreign-policy debates will continue, probably with steadily increasing vitriol. And why not? The last three administrations have made a hash of U.S. foreign policy and have left America a laughing stock among both our friends and foes. Clinton nurtured the growth of our Islamist enemies; Bush made sure that the Muslim world as a whole hated us; and now our "young, wartime president" -- as Mr. Kitfield calls him -- is conducting a foreign policy for a world that exists only in his own mind. The scrapping of missile defense in Europe was simply the… Read more
The real tragedy of the recent anniversary of 9/11 is that we had to commemorate it rather than the day on which we achieved victory over those who attacked us. But then, Americans -- especially sophisticated, well-educated Americans and their media -- love festivals of death, apparently preferring to mourn yearly rather than do the necessary but blue-collar job of annihilating the cause of their mourning. As a result, 9/11 assuredly will be joined in the future by other days of mourning caused by America's unannihilated enemies. Although many have failed to note it, America has been successfully attacked each… Read more
Quite simply, there is no moral dimension to our Afghan War other than to protect the United States and the American people. That moral obligation was ignored by Bush and is detested by Obama, being Harvard educated and the good student of Rev. Wright, Saul Alinsky, and Bill Ayers. Those who believe we should, in Afghanistan, be creating a democracy, rebuilding the economy, providing women's rights, and protecting human rights are, I am sure, good people in their own way and minds. But they are, to a monstrous extent, selfish, unrealistic, and patently unconcerned with America's security. If they really… Read more
This week’s question is an apt one to follow the discussion on summer reading. Summer was once the time when adults indulged in beach reading that allowed them -- in a child-like fashion -- to escape the hard realities and simple right-and-wrong choices of adult life. The books chosen allowed the sea-side reader to create his own reality for a few days and to intellectually experiment and wrestle with creating the world he or she would want to exist. Sadly for America, virtually all of our ruling elite -- politicians, generals, teleprompter-reading news “experts” like Stewart, Hannity, and Olberman; print… Read more
Vice President Biden is more vocal but no different in substance from any other senior U.S. politician in either party. None of them are in the least concerned with protecting the United States. Wheeling out the old Arkansas skirt-chaser to kiss the Dear Leader's butt is typical of what these people regard as a "foreign-policy victory." Whether its hugging Qadhafi, bowing to the Saudi tyrant, posing with the Dear Leader for photos, championing the Chavez-wannabe, or getting our soldiers and Marines killed in Afghanistan so Mrs. Muhammad can vote and abort in Afghanistan, the senior leaders in both parties and their endlessly… Read more
Secretary Gates' next move should be to turn away from weaponry and start to create a military leadership that cares about the lives of the soldiers and Marines it puts in harm's ways. That certainly is not the case today, and so Gates will have to fire a large proportion of now-serving general officers. In almost the ninth year of the Afghan war, the U.S. general officer corps has allowed U.S. politicians to maroon an American field army in Afghanistan which is vastly undermanned and dependent on supply routes that run through hostile territory. Its new local commanders -- General… Read more
The idea of leaving this job to the military probably is correct but it is more than a bit absurd. Our generals, I think, have proven over the last 30 years that they cannot possibly win a war, why should we think they could get an assassination done? Blessed with the best troops on earth, they have failed repeatedly and utterly. They now, for example, have a vastly undermanned field army deployed in Afghanistan, and one whose supply lines run through hostile Pakistani tribal lands and territory being used with Russia's cynical and perhaps transitory permission. In addition, the army's new… Read more
As in most insurgencies, I think what we have seen in Iraq for the past year is a lull in activity on all sides generated by two factors: (1) none of the participants wanted to go head-on against reinforced U.S. combat forces; and (2) none of the participants saw much point in wasting men and ordnance on a U.S. force whose leaders had promised to withdraw in a relatively short timeframe. On this last point, the various insurgent groups have struck me as more or less following Ahmed Shah Masood's argument that after fighting the Soviets for a decade it would be fundmanetally stupid to attack… Read more
I know virtually nothing about North Korea, but I will give Iran a shot. This week’s question presupposes we have the choice of “containing” Iran. I do not think this is the case, although the only state more easily containable than Iran was pre-March, 2003, Iraq. My own view is that the die has been cast and that the current unrest in Iran will be pushed from abroad into something akin to a civil war. If the civil war does not destroy the mullahs’ regime, the Obama regime will lead some kind of coalition-style military effort to punish the mullahs… Read more
Well, we are now set to discover whether Muslims are as reality-resistant and intoxicated with charisma as Americans. This week, President Obama and Messrs. al-Zawahiri and bin Laden delineated the parameters of the discussion. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the al-Qaeda team reminded the Muslim world of the substance of what they are fighting for: The impact of American intervention in the Muslim world, especially U.S. support for Arab tyrannies, its never-ending coddling and protection of Israel, and its military presence across the Muslim world. On the last point, bin Laden was particularly effective in reminding his brethren of a million… Read more
The crux of the problem for the administration is that because the president is in the pocket of the Israel-First lobby of U.S. citizens; has decided against drilling and thereby increased the sway of the oil-rich Arab tyrants over our economy and foreign policy; is increasing U.S. forces in Afghanistan enough to provide more casualties and humiliation but not enough to bring victory; and is pursuing the endless failure known as the “peace process” and therefore needs to keep bribing Mubarak to pretend Egypt does not hate Israel, Obama has few things to offer his audience except words unmatched by… Read more
When smart and talented men and women talk about "hurting America's image" it starts to become clear why the past four administration's have run foreign policy on the basis of guidance provided by People magazine. One might ask -- flippantly -- how many divisions international opinion can field? More seriously, though, the question regarding Guantanamo conduces to the query: “Does it help to protect America and defeat the enemy?” For me, the answer is that it does both to a limited extent. But it is not a war-winner. It is rather another instance of the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama administrations using programs that… Read more
The current situation in Pakistan is the result of three factors: (a) U.S. intervention in Afghanistan to build a democracy instead of simply obliterating al-Qaeda and the Taleban as quickly as possible after 9/11 with whatever force was necessary; (b) U.S. intervention to knife its best ally - General Musharraf -- in the name of democracy and the return to power of the Zadari family of spectacular kleptomaniacs; and, (3) residual Republican and Democratic Cold War thinking that believes Pakistan will be our surrogate in destroying America's enemies. Today, we are watching the worm turn and the key, as Professor Pillar said, is… Read more
The question's core -- to investigate activities under the Bush administration -- and the use of the term "Truth Commission," as if America is some half-baked Third World country, are telling signs of the question’s partisan political purpose. Because I put together the rendition program against al-Qaeda in August, 1995 -- under President Clinton -- and then ran it for 40 months -- during which period all those rendered were taken to Arab prisons under Mr. Clinton's orders -- I can only say that America is far safer today because of the brains and bravery of the CIA officers who successfully executed their orders… Read more
Defense budgeting is science that is a bridge too far for me. It seems to me, however, that we need three priority measures in DoD's spending plans: 1.) Money for an aircraft that can provide effective ground-support for our land forces. 2.) Money for more ground troops in case our political leaders ever begin to take the Islamist threat seriously. 3.) Money to completely replace the current JAG cadre with lawyers who will allow our soldiers and Marines to be killers rather than targets, and our navy to sink/kill pirates whenever they are found.… Read more
Mexico is a problem for only as long as Washington wants it to be. So far our leaders seem to be doing their best not to take the easiest and most effective remedial action; instead, they are doing the kind of psuedo-sophisticated strategizing that will make sure Mexico becomes a long-term festering problem that will do America untold harm. The necessary steps to protecting U.S. interests are not: (a) blaming Mexico's problems on Americans (Mrs. Clinton); (b) giving hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons and training to the utterly corrupt and cartel-penetrated Mexican military and law enforcement community (President Obama); or (c) acting out the cynical… Read more
This question and especially this forum provides a great opportunity for calmly educating Americans about what their elected leaders think on this issue. This blog's list of contributors includes 3 U.S. Congressmen and one U.S. Senator. I am positive that all contributors to and readers of this blog would benefit from hearing from them about: (a) Why they do or do not go up and genuflect on the stage of each year's AIPAC gathering? (b) If they approve of the Mayor of New York City and Congressman Ackerman going to Israel during the Gaza war to applaud Israel's offensive and thereby ensure that… Read more
This is a good question, but the discussion will be feckless if it avoids what the moderator refers to as intimations that may be "ugly." Well, friends, ugly is here and it has been here for decades. There is indeed an identifiable fifth column of pro-Israel U.S. citizens -- I have described them here and elsewhere as Israel-Firsters -- who have consciously made Israel's survival and protection their first priority, and who see worth in America only to the extent that its resources and manpower can be exploited to protect and further the interests of Israel in its religious war-to-the-death… Read more
It truly is a wonder how confident and comfortable some people can be when they are living in the realm of what they want to see, rather than seeing what is on offer. Al-Qaeda has been crushed; its leadership beaten to death; the organization has been badly hurt. These are all surely possibilities, but only for those who know virtually nothing about al-Qaeda or the anemic U.S. war effort. --Because al-Qaeda is an insurgent not a terrorist organization, its leaders always plan to be fighting a more powerful foe and so expect leadership losses. Succession planning therefore is a priority… Read more
It is interesting to hear Admiral Blair hive off America’s security problems into apparently hermetically sealed compartments. Our current economic mess is very concerning, although you could not tell that from Obama’s determination to install his party’s traditional anti-American agenda in terms of vastly expensive and federally controlled education and health care systems. By spending on these programs now, the world is surely seeing a new version of ideological fiddling while Rome burns. One problem with Admiral Blair’s assertion is that it does not seem to think that our various enemies will seek to take advantage of this economy. This is… Read more
We want a "decent country"? Gee, I thought we wanted to annihilate our enemies and come home. A "decent country" is just another term for imperialism of the British 19th Century variety, but an emasculated one because we will not even use the force necessary to create an environment where our defintion of a "decent" society would be a remote possibility. Democracy, Afghans don't want it. Women's rights, ditto ad infinitum. Secularism, ditto. Neutered Islam, ditto. Strong and effective central government, triple ditto. Moroever, the forces that are for most Afghans fighting for Afghan sovereignty -- except in the minds of new-age Washington policymakers and the… Read more
Regarding Larry Korb's comment that we ought to "reassure" the Pak and Afghan people that we are not going to leave. What those folks are looking for is an assurance that we are going to leave. They are not, after all, French, and so have no love of being occupied by foreign forces. Indeed, foreign occupation always increases their ferocity and imposes a transient unity directed against the occupier. And for the limited number in both countries who want us to remain -- Westernized Muslims whose non-Islamic aspirations can only be installed by U.S. bayonets and a semi-permanent occupation -- they are already booking… Read more
Why do so many people have such a hard time defining what the word "victory" means? Victory comes from the overwhelming application of military force which results in no enemies -- or their civilian supporters -- remaining (any skull-stacking jaunt by Genghis Khan), or when you have killed so many of the foe and their civilian supporters that those remaining do not believe the game is worth the candle (Germany and Japan). Now, having the definition squared away all we need to do is to decide whether we want to achieve victory. Mr. Bush had about a 15-month window for… Read more
Before President Obama decides on a policy toward Iran, he might try to accurately define the nature of the threat that country poses to genuine U.S. interests. For those who do not believe that Iran is a nation-state threat to the United States, the president can cite: --The clouds of Iranian air force planes that mercilessly bombed Israel during the 2006 Israel-Hisballah war. (Oh, wait a minute, there were no such attacks?) --The multiple times the Iranian navy has closed the Straits of Hormuz and impoverished Western economies. (You say Iran has never done this?) --The precision Chinese missiles the Iranians have… Read more
It seems to me that giving covert action to the Pentagon is like asking your sclerotic dowager aunt to play one-on-one against against LeBron James. Mr. James would have a hundred points before dear auntie got her sweat pants off. Auntie's heart would be in the right place, but she would always arrive too late because she had to wait for the appropriate paperwork from her battery of doctors. One other passing thought on intelligence reform: Why not sent one honest man or woman with integrity to run the CIA? Of course finding one in this administration might be a tall oder. We have: a president who has no… Read more
The best way to "reform" the Intelligence Community is to begin to kill our transnational enemies -- terrorists, proliferators, gangsters, and nacotrafiickers -- each and every time an opportunitry arises or can be produced. The "failure of intelligence" more often than not is a failure of political will to act in a lethal manner. As a result, the world is now awash in transnational enemies of America. Their numbers are so large that the Intelligence Community really cannot do anything but collect ever-more intelligence about those miscreants who their effete leaders will not kill. The military, of course, is the preferred kliing agent, but some… Read more
With respect to Ms. Leverett, I think the Balkans are a very dubious analogy for Gaza. The U.S.-NATO intervention settled nothing in the Balkans -- it merely let Holbrooke strut and preen as a prelude to his coming failure in Souh Asia. The Balkans intervention simply gave the opponents a chance to catch their breath and rearm; it also left the field wide open for Saudi and other Gulf NGOs to keep bringing Sunni Islamism to Europe. Unless the U.S.-NATO garrison intends to stay forever, the Balkans' religious war will resume after it leaves. Indeed, it may start sooner if Serbia decides to exercise its… Read more
I concur with Mr. Sinnreich, let them fight it out until one or the other is utterly defeated or even annihilated. Then, I suppose, there would be peace in the Levant -- or at least mostly peace -- and it would be even more apparent that America has no genuine national interests there. Such a scenario also would have the salutary impact of showing Americans that, contrary to the "war never settles anything" lunacy they were taught in school, and which their children are now being taught, war can indeed be the precisely correct answer to a problem, and that… Read more
Is there a two-state solution? The response from the United States ought to be the simple question “Who cares?” Of all the many insane issues our political elite has gotten America into overseas, there is none with less importance to genuine U.S. national security and more potential to bring America disaster at home and abroad than Washington’s unnecessary involvement in the Arab-Israel issue. This issue is not about land-for-peace, a two-state solution, or any other of the feckless slogans that swirl around the problem. This issue is one of historic, eternal, and vicious religious hatred -- Muslims for Jews, and Jews… Read more
Because I am a bear of little brain, the answer seems simple to me. Why would al-Qaeda bother to attack inside the United States again? For less than $500,000 and 19 fighters killed-in-action, al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks set America firmly and so far unrelentingly on the road to defeat. Bin Laden’s three goals are: (a) bleed America to bankruptcy; (b) spread U.S. and military forces to the breaking point; and, (c) on the model of Ho Chi Minh, try to promote as much political disunity among Americans as possible. Each of these goals is on the way to accomplishment, with, of course, the… Read more
In a flock of interesting comments, one point that may have been missed is that the U.S. military is running on fumes. We have lots of aircraft carriers, warplanes, submarines, and nuclear weapons but we have far too few soldiers and Marines, and those we have are being worked to a frazzle. We do not have enough soldiers and Marines to win in Afghanistan -- and military victory is the only victory possible there -- and, after we shift more troops to the Afghan theater, we do not have enough troops to reinforce Iraq once Maliki's bloody but quiet war… Read more
And how does our former anti-Soviet bulwark help us in the post-Cold War era? Reportedly it sells the technology we supply to Russia, China, and other of America's great "friends." It suborns U.S. citizens to commit espionage against their country on Israel's behalf. It corrupts U.S. domestic politics and elections via AIPAC and other organizations. It deliberately alienates and provokes the growing American Muslim community by inviting prominent Jewish-Americans -- including the mayor of New York -- to come to Israel and cheer on its invasion of Gaza and the Muslim casualties it has produced. And how does America reward… Read more
Several other contributors on this point are correct: America is not attacked by Islamists because of Israel. But one of the reasons America is attacked by Islamists is because of Washington's unlimited and unqaulified support for Israel. This is a staemnt of fact, not opinion or analysis. It goes along with the fact that the Islamists attack us because we are the protectors of Islamofascist tyrannies in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt and elsehwere. Surely a fact is a fact and ought to be the basis for discussion when we find American treasure and soldiers being spent to defend Israel… Read more
Israel is not only an unnecessary and self-made liability for the United States, it is an untreated and spreading cancer on our domestic politics, foreign policy, and national security. America has no genuine national security interests at stake in either Israel or Palestine; if they both disappeared tomorrow the welfare of Americans and the security of their country would not be impacted a lick. The Arab-Israeli religious war is a war that properly belongs solely to Israelis and Arabs; let them fight each other to the death with no interference in favor of either side from the United States. The continued, automatic,… Read more
Being sick unto death of U.S. general officers whose sole talent is saying "There is no military solution to any problem in the world" whenever their political masters decide America must lose another war for public relations reasons, I am reading Brooks Simpsons's edition of William T. Sherman's Letters, Sherman's Civil War. Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860-1865. Try it and you will find that there is always a military solution.… Read more
Although a bit off topic, Ms. Kleinfeld's suggestion that we not send more troops to Afghanistan tends to support the quite erroneous idea that anything was ever possible in Afghanistan save the military annihilation of our only two genuine national-security concerns in that country, the Taleban and al-Qaeda. The glittering horse we have been and are betting on -- the building of strong central government, military, and police institutions -- is precisely the one that causes endless war and civil war in Afghanistan. The goal of centralizing Afghanistan under Hamid Karzai -- who is abhorred by most non-westernized Afghans, and by all of… Read more
It is hard to imagine why anyone would expect a substantial withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq during the Obama or any other administration. Several factors will prevent the promise from becoming a reality. 1.) We destroyed our most important ally against the Sunni jihadists, namely Saddam Hussein. As long as Saddam was in power, the jihadis were stuck in South Asia. Without Saddam, they have moved 2,500 kilometers westward. The lethal and cost-effective effective -- it cost America nothing -- Saddam bulwark is gone. No one can take his place. Mr. Bush never accepted this. Mr. Obama will be… Read more
President-elect Obama already failed the test, which was simply to read the words of our Islamist opponents. By appointing inveterate interventionists like Biden, Rice, and Clinton; surrounding himself with U.S. citizens more loyal to Israel than America -- Rahm Emanuel, Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk, etc.; and by believeing that two more brigades will "fix" Afghanistan, the President-elect has shown that he -- like Mr. Bush and his colleagues -- is going to do nothing to disturb the Islamists main motivation and only indispensible ally, status quo U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. We can contain Russia, unless we want… Read more
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