Michael Scheuer
Michael F. Scheuer, is an American former intelligence officer for the Central Intelligence Agency, blogger, author, commentator and former adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies. One assignment during his 22-year career was serving as Chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station from 1996 to 1999. He also served as Special Advisor to the Chief of Alec Station from September 2001 to November 2004.
Scheuer became a public figure after being outed as the anonymous author of the book Imperial Hubris, in which he criticized many of the United States' assumptions about Islamist insurgencies and particularly Osama bin Laden. Later in 2004, shortly after the "outing" of Scheuer's harsh criticism of America's close alliance with Israel, Scheuer resigned from his position at the CIA. In his book, Scheuer depicted bin Laden as a rational actor who was fighting to weaken the United States by weakening its economy, rather than merely combating and killing Americans.
Scheuer challenges the common assumption that terrorism is the threat facing the United States in the modern era, arguing rather that Islamist insurgency is the core of the conflict between the U.S. and Islamist forces, who in places such as Kashmir, Xinjiang, and Chechnya are "struggling not just for independence but against institutionalized barbarism." Osama bin Laden acknowledged the book in a 2007 statement, suggesting that it revealed "the reasons for your losing the war against us".
In February 2009, Scheuer was fired from his position as a senior fellow of the Jamestown Foundation by the foundation's president. In December 2013 and January 2014, Scheuer was criticized for seeming to advise American citizens to seriously consider assassinating U.S. president Barack Obama. In September 2014, in addition to earlier "praise" received from al-Qaeda, the Islamic State issued a press release quoting Scheuer in order to appeal to an American audience. By 2019, Scheuer was endorsing QAnon conspiracy theories and advocating violence against various perceived enemies of Donald Trump, including former president Barack Obama, whom Scheuer falsely claimed was "Kenya-born."
Biography
Scheuer was born in Buffalo, New York, and graduated from Canisius College with a BA in history in 1974. He went on to earn an MA in American History from Niagara University in 1976 and another MA in American Canadian Relations from Carleton University in 1982. He also received a PhD in British Empire–U.S.–Canada–U.K. relations from the University of Manitoba in 1986.Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004. He was chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station at the CIA's Counterterrorism Center from 1996 to 1999, and worked as Special Adviser to the Chief of the bin Laden unit from September 2001 to November 2004. He is now known to have been the anonymous author of both the 2004 book Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror and the earlier anonymous work Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America. After his anonymously published books were publicly associated with his name, he was mentioned by Osama bin Laden in his statement of September 7, 2007.
After leaving the CIA in 2004, Scheuer worked as a news analyst for CBS News and a terrorism analyst for the Jamestown Foundation's online publication Global Terrorism Analysis. He made radio and television appearances and taught a graduate-level course on al-Qaeda at Georgetown University. He also participates in conferences on terrorism and national security issues, such as the New America Foundation's December 2004 conference, "Al Qaeda 2.0: Transnational Terrorism After 9/11."
In 2009, Scheuer reported that he had lost his position as a Senior Fellow with the Jamestown Foundation, after "several major financial donors to Jamestown threatened to withdraw funding" if he continued in that role. The funding threats were pursuant to his criticism of Barack Obama's "dancing the Tel Aviv two-step" in allegedly kowtowing to the Israeli lobby, as well as Scheuer's disdaining of Obama's selection as Chief of Staff of Rahm Emanuel, "a U.S. citizen who during the 1991 Gulf War left America to serve in Israel's military."
Publications
''Through Our Enemies' Eyes''
His first book, published anonymously, is an analysis of the public discourse available on al-Qaeda's ideology and strategy. In it, Scheuer explores the bin Laden phenomenon and its implications for U.S. security. He began the book in 1999 as an unclassified manual for counterterrorism officers. Due to the secrecy agreement he signed as an employee of the CIA, the book is based solely on unclassified intelligence or material available from open sources such as media reports. His main thesis in the work is that the view of bin Laden as a lunatic is a form of "myopia" that limits Western military thinkers' ability to respond to the bin Laden phenomenon. He writes that "the West's road to hell lies in approaching the bin Laden problem with the presumption that only the lunatic fringe could oppose what the United States is trying to accomplish through its foreign policy toward the Muslim world. Bin Laden's philosophy is slowly harnessing the two most powerful motivating forces in contemporary international affairs: religion and nationalism."he crux of my argument is simply that America is in a war with militant Islamists that it cannot avoid; one that it cannot talk or appease its way out of; one in which our irreconcilable Islamist foes will have to be killed, an act which unavoidably will lead to innocent deaths; and one that is motivated in large measure by the impact of U.S. foreign policies in the Islamic world, one of which is unqualified U.S. support for Israel.
''Imperial Hubris''
In his second book, Imperial Hubris, a New York Times bestseller, Scheuer writes that the Islamist threat to the United States is rooted in "how easy it is for Muslims to see, hear, experience, and hate the six U.S. policies bin Laden repeatedly refers to as anti-Muslim:- U.S. support for apostate, corrupt, and tyrannical Muslim governments.
- U.S. and other Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula.
- U.S. support for Israel that keeps Palestinians in the Israelis' thrall.
- U.S. pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low.
- U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
- U.S. support for Russia, India, and China against their Muslim militants."
In a videotape released around September 7, 2007, Osama bin Laden stated, "If you want to understand what's going on and if you would like to get to know some of the reasons for your losing the war against us, then read the book of Michael Scheuer."
''Marching Toward Hell''
Scheuer's book Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq was published on February 12, 2008. It details how the 2003 Iraq War has affected Al-Qaeda and the United States. He argues that the instability in the Iraq War has benefited Al-Qaeda without serving any U.S. interests.Views
War on Terror
Scheuer's views emphasized the danger of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, as well as the ineffectiveness of U.S. policy against these imminent threats. The threat to the United States, Scheuer has consistently maintained, continues to grow, and the U.S. continually fails to grasp the nature of the struggle in which it is engaged: Islamist and anti-American sentiment continue to grow around the world, and the bin Laden movement is aimed, not at killing or conquering Americans or reforming their internal political systems, but rather bankrupting them in order to reduce their worldwide influence and thereby liberate Muslims from the yoke of American political, military, and financial influence. The failure of the U.S. to apprehend this threat is, in part, rooted in a misunderstanding and underestimation of Osama bin Laden himself. To Scheuer, Osama bin Laden's "beliefs, goals, and intentions" werecarefully chosen, plainly spoken, and precise. He has set out the Muslim world's problems as he sees them; determined that they are caused by the United States; explained why they must be remedied; and outlined how he will try to do so. Seldom in America's history has an enemy laid out so clearly the basis for the war he is waging against it.
Scheuer's criticism of U.S. foreign policy includes a sweeping condemnation of the invasion of Iraq, which he has characterized as a "Christmas present" to Osama bin Laden's Islamist recruitment efforts, and a validation of bin Laden's claims that the U.S. is at war with Islam. From his personal involvement in background research in the run-up to the war, Scheuer states that "there was no connection between and Saddam."
U.S. rhetoric about bin Laden having allegedly "hat freedom" has also irked Scheuer, who suggests that those "willing to give their lives to destroy the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia... must want freedom in some kind of way." This erroneous rhetoric, according to Scheuer, is not only to be found in the media and among politicians, but even in the 9/11 Commission Report, in which bin Laden and his followers were identified "as takfiris, who kill Muslims if they don't agree with them. They're not takfiris. They're just very devout, severe Salafists and Wahhabis."
The insistence on referring to al-Qaeda and the Islamist movement around it as a terrorist group or terrorist movement has also been a mistake, according to Scheuer. The U.S. is faced with an insurgency, rather than mere terrorism. Speaking on the BBC News on November 9, 2012, Scheuer criticized what he called the Obama administration's deceit about the threat from Islamic militants, and misleading the American people in his first administration by claiming that the word "jihad" had nothing to do with military affairs, and that it had to do with "self reform and community improvement", which Scheuer claims was a blatant lie.