Tweet
U.S. leaders’ fingerprints are on the detonators
By Dr. Michael Scheuer, former head of the Bin Laden Alec Station of the Central Intelligence Agency, and now Professor at Georgetown
While the Tsarnaev brothers apparently conducted the Marathon bombings in Boston, the detonators of those bombs also have the fingerprints of most Democratic and Republican politicians all over them, and those men and women are in a measure responsible for each and every one of the Boston casualties. Why? Because once again it is blatantly obvious from the evidence the authorities have presented to date that the attackers were motivated by what the U.S. government does in the Muslim world and not because of our freedoms, liberties, and gender equality. So before President Obama and Secretary Kerry, Senators McCain and Graham, and most of the mainstream media swing into intense lying mode — which amounts to “those murderous Muslims are crazy and hate liberty” — here are several contact points with reality worth keeping in mind
–1.) To the best of my knowledge, since Osama bin Laden declared war on America in 1996 no Islamist attacker or would-be attacker in the West has ever told the authorities after his arrest that he was motivated to attack by the West’s values, lifestyles, and freedoms. In addition, none of the recovered documents or taped statements by domestic Islamist attackers who died in action have yielded evidence of that kind of motivation. This sort of evidence consistently has shown that the attackers’ overarching motivation to be hatred for U.S. and Western foreign policy toward and intervention in the Islamic world.
–2.) Likewise, no major Sunni Islamist leader has preached jihad against the United States and the West because of its values, lifestyle, etc. That they loathe many parts of what has become the West’s semi-pagan society is clear; secular democracy and feminism are not coming to their precincts anytime soon, even if Obama, McCain, and Hillary Clinton continue to seek to impose them with bayonets. Nearly to a man, Islamist leaders have unrelentingly sought to focus Muslims on U.S. and Western interventionist policies and actions in the Muslim world. And those leaders have no lack of things to focus Muslim attention on. Since 2011 alone, for example, President Obama and the similarly interventionist NATO leaders have invaded two Muslim countries — Mali and Libya; established a new U.S. military base in Muslim Niger; and are on the verge of intervening in Syria. In addition, they arbitrarily stripped Muslim Sudan of 30-plus percent of its territory and 75-to-80 percent of its oil reserves and gave it to a new and Christian “South Sudan.” To paraphrase what Edmund Burke said about the resistance of American colonials to direct British intervention and taxation, Muslims who would not resist this sort of illegitimate intervention would be fit to be slaves.
–3.) On the U.S. and Western side of the equation we find a mindlessness that is startling; productive of dead and wounded Americans; and which increases the power of our Islamist enemies. Given points 1 and 2 above, it is nothing less than amazing that senior U.S. political leaders in both parties and much of the media — as well as their counterparts in Europe — continue to preach that Americans are being attacked because of their lifestyle and freedoms. One would think that someone in the media would ask them to produce the evidence for this contention, which of course they could not do. But no one has asked because these politicians, pundits, and journalists would have to admit that U.S. foreign policy — preeminently our support for the Saudi tyranny and Israel; our invasions of Muslim countries; and our efforts to impose Western political and social views on Muslims and neuter Islam — is the main motivation of our Islamist enemies and that, therefore, U.S. policy has helped to kill and maim military and civilian Americans abroad, as well as in Boston, New York, Arkansas, Fort Hood, Texas, Washington, and the rural fields of Pennsylvania.
–4.) U.S. and Western interventionism also is, in may ways, a two-for for Islamist leaders, their groups, and their ability to attract increasing numbers of young man to their banners. For example, we invade Libya and destroy a viciously anti-Islamist regime. Thereby, we assist in the freeing of thousands of Islamist fighters from Libyan prisons, skilled and experienced men who immediately return to the mujahedin; we facilitate the looting of dozens of arsenals — as we did in Egypt and Tunisia — and so we better arm the mujahedin across Africa; and we deliberately destroy a valuable intelligence ally in our war against the Islamists. And all this in the name of a secular democratic movement that surely exists in the deranged-by-feminism brains of Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice but to no considerable extent anywhere in the Arab world.
–5.) Just as damaging to the genuine national security interests of the United States and Western Europe is the combination of relentless interventionism and feckless, effeminate war-making. Whether the war was emphatically a necessity — as in Afghanistan — or a criminally whimsical choice –as in Iraq and Mali — the U.S. and its NATO allies always lose. And they lose not because their Islamist enemies are stronger or better armed — they clearly are not — but because the U.S. and the West will not kill the requisite number of the enemy and their supporters, and destroy enough of the foe’s resources and infrastructures, to make our the Islamists know for certain that the bloody game they started — their religious war against the West — is not worth the candle. As a result, we have suffered truly staggering loses in Iraq and Afghanistan, as we will in Mali as the Islamist insurgency there evolves and expands. However much President Obama and the war-boys McCain and Graham dress up the effectiveness and describe the success of the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan, all of the Muslim world — and especially the young male segment of that population — perceives that the much vaunted U.S. military had its ass kicked and is running home chased by Allah’s warriors, just as the Soviets were evicted from Afghanistan in the 1980s. What better recruiting tool could there be than a perceived reality among young Muslims — underpinned by the reality of U.S. withdrawal-without-victory in Iraq and Afghanistan — that the theoretically omni-powerful U.S. military is an organization that is made reliably contemptible because it is deliberately hamstrung by politicians who are more than willing to wail lamentations and cry crocodile tears over U.S. casualties, but are not willing to protect Americans because they cannot face the reality that the one and only thing that counts in war is victory.
–6.) So as Boston is cleaned-up and the casualties are buried and tended, all Americans have yet another chance to think about how long they will tolerate a war that Washington refuses to win, while it systematically and knowingly providing much of the motivation for those Islamists intent on killing of Americans. Through its bipartisan truckling to the Saudi and other Gulf tyrannies; its intervention in places like Libya and Syria, where we have no genuine national interest and are helping to put Islamists in power; its willingness to accept U.S. military defeat everywhere; and its unquestioning bipartisan support for Israel and thereby the corruption of U.S. politics by AIPAC and the campaign funds provided by pro-Israel U.S. citizens, Republicans and Democrats are helping to kill Americans, their families, and their children.
–7.) There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that the young George S. Patton — then fighting to defend the U.S. border with Mexico — raised a July 4th toast to America’s independence with the words: “May God bless America, and may He damn all of her enemies.” At that point in his career, Patton surely had Pancho Villa and his raiders in mind as enemies, not the bipartisan political leaders of the United States. Given where we stand today in our losing war against Islamist insurgents and terrorists, Patton, if alive, might well enlarge the compass of his definition of America’s enemies to include recent U.S. presidents, senators, and congressman — and he would be right to do so.
By Dr. Michael Scheuer, former head of the Bin Laden Alec Station of the Central Intelligence Agency, and now Professor at Georgetown
While the Tsarnaev brothers apparently conducted the Marathon bombings in Boston, the detonators of those bombs also have the fingerprints of most Democratic and Republican politicians all over them, and those men and women are in a measure responsible for each and every one of the Boston casualties. Why? Because once again it is blatantly obvious from the evidence the authorities have presented to date that the attackers were motivated by what the U.S. government does in the Muslim world and not because of our freedoms, liberties, and gender equality. So before President Obama and Secretary Kerry, Senators McCain and Graham, and most of the mainstream media swing into intense lying mode — which amounts to “those murderous Muslims are crazy and hate liberty” — here are several contact points with reality worth keeping in mind
–1.) To the best of my knowledge, since Osama bin Laden declared war on America in 1996 no Islamist attacker or would-be attacker in the West has ever told the authorities after his arrest that he was motivated to attack by the West’s values, lifestyles, and freedoms. In addition, none of the recovered documents or taped statements by domestic Islamist attackers who died in action have yielded evidence of that kind of motivation. This sort of evidence consistently has shown that the attackers’ overarching motivation to be hatred for U.S. and Western foreign policy toward and intervention in the Islamic world.
–2.) Likewise, no major Sunni Islamist leader has preached jihad against the United States and the West because of its values, lifestyle, etc. That they loathe many parts of what has become the West’s semi-pagan society is clear; secular democracy and feminism are not coming to their precincts anytime soon, even if Obama, McCain, and Hillary Clinton continue to seek to impose them with bayonets. Nearly to a man, Islamist leaders have unrelentingly sought to focus Muslims on U.S. and Western interventionist policies and actions in the Muslim world. And those leaders have no lack of things to focus Muslim attention on. Since 2011 alone, for example, President Obama and the similarly interventionist NATO leaders have invaded two Muslim countries — Mali and Libya; established a new U.S. military base in Muslim Niger; and are on the verge of intervening in Syria. In addition, they arbitrarily stripped Muslim Sudan of 30-plus percent of its territory and 75-to-80 percent of its oil reserves and gave it to a new and Christian “South Sudan.” To paraphrase what Edmund Burke said about the resistance of American colonials to direct British intervention and taxation, Muslims who would not resist this sort of illegitimate intervention would be fit to be slaves.
–3.) On the U.S. and Western side of the equation we find a mindlessness that is startling; productive of dead and wounded Americans; and which increases the power of our Islamist enemies. Given points 1 and 2 above, it is nothing less than amazing that senior U.S. political leaders in both parties and much of the media — as well as their counterparts in Europe — continue to preach that Americans are being attacked because of their lifestyle and freedoms. One would think that someone in the media would ask them to produce the evidence for this contention, which of course they could not do. But no one has asked because these politicians, pundits, and journalists would have to admit that U.S. foreign policy — preeminently our support for the Saudi tyranny and Israel; our invasions of Muslim countries; and our efforts to impose Western political and social views on Muslims and neuter Islam — is the main motivation of our Islamist enemies and that, therefore, U.S. policy has helped to kill and maim military and civilian Americans abroad, as well as in Boston, New York, Arkansas, Fort Hood, Texas, Washington, and the rural fields of Pennsylvania.
–4.) U.S. and Western interventionism also is, in may ways, a two-for for Islamist leaders, their groups, and their ability to attract increasing numbers of young man to their banners. For example, we invade Libya and destroy a viciously anti-Islamist regime. Thereby, we assist in the freeing of thousands of Islamist fighters from Libyan prisons, skilled and experienced men who immediately return to the mujahedin; we facilitate the looting of dozens of arsenals — as we did in Egypt and Tunisia — and so we better arm the mujahedin across Africa; and we deliberately destroy a valuable intelligence ally in our war against the Islamists. And all this in the name of a secular democratic movement that surely exists in the deranged-by-feminism brains of Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice but to no considerable extent anywhere in the Arab world.
–5.) Just as damaging to the genuine national security interests of the United States and Western Europe is the combination of relentless interventionism and feckless, effeminate war-making. Whether the war was emphatically a necessity — as in Afghanistan — or a criminally whimsical choice –as in Iraq and Mali — the U.S. and its NATO allies always lose. And they lose not because their Islamist enemies are stronger or better armed — they clearly are not — but because the U.S. and the West will not kill the requisite number of the enemy and their supporters, and destroy enough of the foe’s resources and infrastructures, to make our the Islamists know for certain that the bloody game they started — their religious war against the West — is not worth the candle. As a result, we have suffered truly staggering loses in Iraq and Afghanistan, as we will in Mali as the Islamist insurgency there evolves and expands. However much President Obama and the war-boys McCain and Graham dress up the effectiveness and describe the success of the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan, all of the Muslim world — and especially the young male segment of that population — perceives that the much vaunted U.S. military had its ass kicked and is running home chased by Allah’s warriors, just as the Soviets were evicted from Afghanistan in the 1980s. What better recruiting tool could there be than a perceived reality among young Muslims — underpinned by the reality of U.S. withdrawal-without-victory in Iraq and Afghanistan — that the theoretically omni-powerful U.S. military is an organization that is made reliably contemptible because it is deliberately hamstrung by politicians who are more than willing to wail lamentations and cry crocodile tears over U.S. casualties, but are not willing to protect Americans because they cannot face the reality that the one and only thing that counts in war is victory.
–6.) So as Boston is cleaned-up and the casualties are buried and tended, all Americans have yet another chance to think about how long they will tolerate a war that Washington refuses to win, while it systematically and knowingly providing much of the motivation for those Islamists intent on killing of Americans. Through its bipartisan truckling to the Saudi and other Gulf tyrannies; its intervention in places like Libya and Syria, where we have no genuine national interest and are helping to put Islamists in power; its willingness to accept U.S. military defeat everywhere; and its unquestioning bipartisan support for Israel and thereby the corruption of U.S. politics by AIPAC and the campaign funds provided by pro-Israel U.S. citizens, Republicans and Democrats are helping to kill Americans, their families, and their children.
–7.) There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that the young George S. Patton — then fighting to defend the U.S. border with Mexico — raised a July 4th toast to America’s independence with the words: “May God bless America, and may He damn all of her enemies.” At that point in his career, Patton surely had Pancho Villa and his raiders in mind as enemies, not the bipartisan political leaders of the United States. Given where we stand today in our losing war against Islamist insurgents and terrorists, Patton, if alive, might well enlarge the compass of his definition of America’s enemies to include recent U.S. presidents, senators, and congressman — and he would be right to do so.
Comment