Ex-CIA Expert Wrong on Terror Motives

The former head of the CIA’s bin Laden Unit, Michael Scheuer, has carved out a niche for himself as an author, television news terrorism expert, and designated bitter former intelligence officer turned U.S. government basher. As such he is the darling of liberal media outlets, and he is a frequent and welcomed guest. His writings and commentary are consistently filled with dire warnings to western governments that they do not understand the motives of Islamic terrorists and thus cannot win the War on Terror. Scheuer may have held prominent positions within the CIA, but that apparently did not insulate him from adopting a sympathetic view of what he believes are the motives behind Islamic terrorism.

Speaking in Sydney, Australia earlier this week, Scheuer blasted the U.S. and its allies for failure in the War on Terror, but I want readers to focus on a few key arguments Scheuer put forth to explain why he believes the West will lose the War on Terror. I will then counter Scheuer’s description of Islamic terror motives with the words of an actual radical Islamist who paints a very different portrait of Islamic motives. First, Scheuer’s “blame the West for terrorism” argument, excerpted from Australia’s The Age:

"We in the West are fighting an enemy we have woefully chosen to misunderstand and to whom we are losing hands down and on every front," he said.

Mr. Scheuer said there was no hope of bringing democracy to Iraq or Afghanistan without a much greater commitment to defeat insurgents.

He said the West's biggest mistake in the war on terror was to ignore the grievances of Islamic insurgents.

He said Western politicians, including Prime Minister John Howard, deceived the public by suggesting that terrorists were motivated only by hatred for freedoms enjoyed in the West.

Mr. Howard had "warbled" the "wildly inaccurate ditty" that the London bombers were motivated by a hatred of Western culture, Mr. Scheuer said.

He said Al-Qaeda was motivated by anger towards US foreign policy in the Middle East rather than by hatred for Western culture.

That included the US military presence in the region, its backing of tyrannical Arab regimes and "unqualified" support for Israel.

Scheuer accuses Western governments of misunderstanding the enemy, and based on my own experience I would agree that understanding of radical Islam is in short supply within our government agencies. The federal government is far too influenced by groups like CAIR and not influenced enough by those who actively track Islamist extremist activity, like Jihad Watch. However, Scheuer should engage in serious introspection to examine whether he likewise possesses only a shallow knowledge of terror motives. After a long career with the CIA studying and combating Islamic terrorism, it is remarkable that Scheuer ascribes political rather than religious or cultural motives to Islamic terrorists. Everything I have learned about Islamic terrorists leads me to a very different conclusion about their motives: radical Islamists seek nothing short of total global Islamic rule, with Sharia law as the established behavioral code for all mankind.

If that sounds like a radical conclusion, it is, but perhaps the words of former Islamic radical Hassan Butt published by the UK Daily Mail, will help readers distinguish the true terror motive from propaganda arguments incessantly regurgitated by Islamists and Western liberals alike that the West could somehow pacify these terrorists by changing our foreign policies:

When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network - a series of British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology - I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.

By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this "Blair's bombs" line did our propaganda work for us.

More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

…And as with previous terror attacks, people are again saying that violence carried out by Muslims is all to do with foreign policy.

For example, on Saturday on Radio 4's Today programme, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said: "What all our intelligence shows about the opinions of disaffected young Muslims is the main driving force is not Afghanistan, it is mainly Iraq."

…I left the British Jihadi Network in February 2006 because I realised that its members had simply become mindless killers. But if I were still fighting for their cause, I'd be laughing once again.

…And though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice.

There isn't enough room to outline everything here, but the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a model of the world in which you are either a believer or an infidel.

Formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion: they are considered to be one and the same.

For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.

But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).

Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world.

Along with many of my former peers, I was taught by Pakistani and British radical preachers that this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War (Dar ul-Harb) allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief.

Scheuer and Western governments, liberal or conservative, need look no further than Butt’s phrase, “creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice,” to gain a realistic understanding of Islamic terrorists’ motives. There is nothing complicated contained in this radical theology. It is not based on our oil interests, or our “occupation” of Iraq, or our support of Israel’s “occupation” of Palestine. It is based on crystal clear distinctions between good (Islam) and evil (unbelievers) and the assurance that any action taken to hasten the dawning of a global Islamic state, no matter how violent, is justified and fulfills Islamic scriptural prophecy. We are merely the largest and most formidable obstacle to this quest for global Islamic domination.

Only when Western governments and media terror “experts” like Scheuer acknowledge the true motive of the enemy in the War on Terror will the formulation of effective strategies to win that war be possible. America and her allies united in WWII to prevent the establishment of a global totalitarian Nazi state. Preventing the establishment of a global Islamic state under Sharia law will require a similar and likely longer-term unity and commitment to victory.

If the divisions among us exposed by the Iraq War and the War on Terror are any indication, such unity of purpose between our two political parties may already be impossible. When presidential candidates from both parties echo Scheuer’s flawed argument that America causes terrorism through its foreign policies (Ron Paul-R and all Democratic candidates), or claim that the War on Terror is merely a Bush bumper sticker slogan (John Edwards), it is clear that ignorance of our enemy’s motives is endemic at the highest levels of Western government and media institutions.

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Michael Scheuer, CIA, Terrorism Expert, Hassan Butt, Radical Islam, Islamic State, War on Terror, Jihad, Foreign Policy