I am six years late to the party. It would have been handy, I suppose, to have read Michael Scheuer's Imperial Hubris when it came out in 2004 but better late than never, I guess. Actually, it remains relevant here in 2010.
Scheuer's jeremiad gets its name from his idea that we Americans do not understand foreign affairs very well. It's as if we wear blinders which only allow us to view the rest of the world through a very narrow lens.
The way we see and interpret people and events outside North America is heavily clouded by arrogance and self-centeredness amounting to what I called ‘imperial arrogance’ in Through Our Enemies’ Eyes. This is not a genetic flaw in Americans that has been present since the Pilgrims splashed ashore at Plymouth Rock, but rather a way of thinking America’s elites have acquired since the end of World War II. It is a process of interpreting the world so it makes sense to us, a process yielding a world in which few events seem alien because we Americanize their components.
He sets out to correct our myopic view of the world by first noting that Islamist terrorists fly planes into our buildings not because they hate our way of life but rather because of what we do. George Bush told us that they "hate our freedoms" so go shopping. And we did. We had a hearty bout of dancing on a volcano until the recession. Ignored in all of that were Osama bin Laden's own words in which he explained why he hates America. For instance, our troops never left the Arabian peninsula after Gulf War I. We support other countries that oppress Muslims plus we also lend our support to apostate governments of Arab lands. And we are friends of Israel to boot.
Scheuer is very insistent that bin Laden wages a defensive jihad. The al-Qaeda leader feels that Islam is under attack around the globe and that the United States is the biggest bully. His is not an assault on America to take it over but rather to get it to stop interfering in Muslim lands.
Another mistake that he set out to correct was the misperception that bin Laden is simply an irrational lunatic who is lashing out at the West. Scheuer looks at bin Laden's statements as well as the testimony of those who know him and have met the man. What emerges is not a picture of someone who is criminally insane, but rather an ostensibly nice person whose religious convictions are under attack or, at least, that's his perception. The book gives bin Laden a lot of credit and paints him as a more than capable adversary.
No doubt many Lefties read this book and were quite happy to hear Scheuer be critical of Bush's views. However, he is no pacifist. Indeed, the book promotes the idea that the Bush administration prosecuted the war more like a police action when it should have been engaging in all-out slaughter and probably salting the earth for good measure. For Scheuer, America is fighting for its existence and should spare nothing in its struggle. He appeals to the memory of Abraham Lincoln and his disgust at General McClellan for not having fully destroyed Lee's armies at Antietam. We citizens should be willing to sacrifice more of our young men and women and also be prepared for more civilians in, say, Afghanistan to be killed as our soldiers pursue the enemy. But he doesn't think we have the stomach for more of our own coming home in body bags and he sees politicians in CYA mode not wanting to engage in conflicts which cause more than a modicum of casualties. He quotes Sherman in his attempt to persuade the reader that only a no-holds-barred conflict will defeat al-Qaeda: "Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster."
Reading some parts of the book made me think that I was reading a screenplay by John Milius. "General Petraeus, what is good in life?" On one hand, I'm sympathetic to this view. War is hell. We paid tribal leaders to do a job which our troops should have been doing and, moreover, they took our money and ran. Secondly, we didn't cut off escape routes so al Qaeda went to Pakistan. Our venture in Iraq was bungled. Scheuer makes some good points, in my view, about how our military interventions have been completely half-assed the past 20 years or so. We don’t finish the job, so to speak. But is a scorched earth policy what's needed?
There are a couple things in the book which confused me, which seemed contradictory. First is Scheuer's admonition that America's conflict with the Islamists (indeed, he says we are at war with Islam itself) should not be resolved with appeasement nor negotiation. Nothing less than total destruction is warranted. Yet he advocates for American energy independence and disengagement from Persian Gulf countries. Scheuer is very much a nationalist and he refers to our great experiment in self-rule, which Lincoln saved, as something very much worth fighting for. America first. Our support for tyrants is a stain on our belief in democracy. Fine, but isn't disengagement with the Middle East appeasement? That's exactly what bin Laden wants – for us to stop supporting the corrupt Saudi regime, to get our troops out of there, out of Iraq, etc. I suppose it's a grey area but leaving the Persian Gulf smacks of appeasement to me whereas staying there in pursuit of oil is very much an "America first" kind of thing. It just rings contradictory to my ears.
Another bit that I have a hard time reconciling is how Scheuer contends that our support for Russia (vs Chechens), India (vs. Kashmiris), and China (vs. Uighurs) in their wars against Muslim terrorists works against us. He says:
We are in a fight to the death with al Qaeda whether or not these states approve, and our support for them makes the fight harder because it again validates bin Laden's contention that the United States is attacking Islam and supports any country willing to kill or persecute Muslims.
In a section entitled "Get Used to and Good at Killing", he says:
Killing in large numbers is not enough to defeat our Muslim foes. With killing must come a Sherman-like razing of infrastructure. Roads and irrigation systems; bridges, power plants, and crops in the field; fertilizer plants and grain mills – all these and more will need to be destroyed to deny the enemy its support base. Land mines, moreover will be massively reintroduced to seal borders and mountain passes too long, high, or numerous to close to with U.S. soldiers. As noted, such actions will yield large civilian casualties, displaced populations, and refugee flows. Again, this sort of bloody-mindedness is neither admirable nor desirable, but it will remain America's only option so long as she stands by her failed policies toward the Muslim world.
It just seems odd to me to say that we need to go out laying waste in Muslim lands like the Romans did in Carthage but let's not get bin Laden really mad at us by supporting China because it is going after the Uighurs. If we see an Afghan settlement of say, 50 people, wherein 5 al Qaeda members are hiding and nuke it from orbit because it's the only way to be sure, is our support of China, Russia, and India really going to mean anything? When we are going out and slaughtering women and children en masse, does Scheuer really think bin Laden is going to gain support by pointing out that America supports India in its war with Kashmir? It's like he's worrying about a leaky faucet when he should be worried about a collapsing roof.
So here we are six years on from when Imperial Hubris was published. What's changed? In terms of Scheuer's main points (he also talks about American institutional issues, e.g. – an old buddies club hampering the promotion of competent individuals), I can't really tell that much has. We certainly haven't adopted Sherman's attitude. We are withdrawing from Iraq and now we're launching cruise missiles into Yemen. As for Americans' perceptions of the enemy, I think it's sad – beyond sad – that we don't talk much about why we're in Afghanistan nor about al Qaeda. I really don't know if large numbers of people think "they hate us for our freedoms" or not. On a recent episode of Media Matters by Prof. Robert McChesney, he noted that many of his undergrads have no idea why we're there. New documentaries about our venture there include one about Pat Tillman's death and one that follows a single platoon. I've not seen them but, from what I've read, they focus in on a specific area or incident and largely avoid the big picture. This is not to say that either doc is to be faulted for this but rather that they're part of a larger scenario where our national dialogue on Afghanistan has shifted from the big picture to the narrow focus.
It just seems that seems that our national conversation on our war on terrorism doesn't include any sense that there is a master plan and that the war in Afghanistan is a part of it. Conversations seem fragmented. Or perhaps that's just me and my own narrow view of things.
Either way, Imperial Hubris remains an important read if for no other reason than to encourage discussion. We seem to be on auto-pilot. There are terrorists in Yemen? OK, go shoot a few missiles while I read my book on my iPad. It seems that there are many Americans who don't understand nor have any inclination to understand what our conflict with terrorism is or entails. That is a prescription for endless war.
No comments:
Post a Comment