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

Blogs, Radio Talkers Use Mall Killer's Muslim Affiliation for Shock Value: Ignore Youth's Traumatic Escape from Bosnian Genocide

Are conservative blogs and news sites exploiting the fact that the Trolley Square Mall shooter, Sulejman Talovic, was Muslim simply to attract site traffic? Elaine Jarvik, Deborah Bulkeley, and Ben Winslow of the Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) provided two very important follow-up articles in today’s edition about the slayings at the Trolley Square Mall earlier this week. Jarvik and Bulkeley took conservative sites to task for declaring, without any evidence, that because Talovic was Muslim he must have engaged in “Sudden Jihad Syndrome” as argued by Jihad Watch.

The authors cite emotion-inducing headlines from Little Green Footballs and MichaelSavage.com as incorrectly distilling the tragedy in Salt Lake City down to a single theme: “Salt Lake City Killer Was a Muslim.” As a regular reader of both sites criticized in this article, and as Spy The News! readers know, I have dedicated a career to countering ideologies like radical Islam. However, I sided with the authors in their assessment that the shooter’s religion played an important role in the incident, but not for the “jihadist” reasons headlined by Jihad Watch and Little Green Footballs.

Before casting stones at Muslims in general or specifically Sulejman Talovic himself, perhaps news sites and bloggers should have delved into the background of this young man prior to publishing scathing headlines designed to incite hatred and fear.

The second Deseret Morning News article, by Ben Winslow with the assistance of a Bosnian news reporter, described in great detail the experiences that make the Trolley Square shooter very different from the teen slayers at Columbine or other youthful murderers. The article, “A Child of Violence: Talovic Survived Genocide,” should cause many to rethink their assumptions that Talovic acted out any “jihad” impulse. While it is true that he was Muslim, there is no evidence he was active in any local mosques and most of his ties to regular Islamic worship were cut when his family emigrated to the U.S. after five years as refugees from Milosevic’s genocide in Bosnia.

From Winslow’s article, the following excerpts shed light on what Talovic experienced at the tender age of 7 and through more than 5 years of his youth. Spy The News! urges readers and fellow bloggers to see the forest in this situation (suffered genocide trauma), and not merely the trees (he was Muslim):

As a little boy in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sulejman Talovic hid in fear from the Serb military forces who were slaughtering Muslim men and boys as war and genocide ravaged his country . . . . neighbors also acknowledged that the war in Bosnia likely left its mark on the boy. During the war, the family lived for five years as refugees in Bosnia, and spent almost a year in the mountains hiding from the Serb military forces, neighbors said. Up to 200,000 people were killed and 1.8 million others lost their homes in Bosnia's 1992-95 war. . . .

The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina forced the Talovic family to live as refugees. From 1993 until they emigrated to the United States in 1998, they were on the run, moving from village to village.

They lived near Srebrenica, where more than 8,300 Muslim boys and men were killed in 1995 by Serb forces loyal to ex-Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milosevic. Sulejman Talovic was 7 years old then.

The atrocities of war and "ethnic cleansing," and the pressures of daily life in a new country after he immigrated to the United States, could have created immense pressure on Talovic, according to Greg Jurkovic, a psychology professor at Georgia State University who has studied Bosnian teenagers in both Atlanta and Sarajevo.

"What we're finding is that so many of these kids are suffering from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)," he said. "What seems to be most important is what they were exposed to, their war exposure." [emphasis added]

Some argue that because he survived genocide against Muslims at the hands of “Christian” Serbs he was thus acting out a desire to kill infidels when he entered the Trolley Square Mall. However, that conclusion ignores the fact that the genocide was a personally traumatic experience that scarred the boy psychologically. Perhaps the authors of Little Green Footballs and Jihad Watch should visit the psychiatric emergency units at various Veterans Administration hospitals to witness firsthand the mental illnesses produced by battlefield trauma. Schizophrenia (acute or paranoid types), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, sleep disorders, Bi-Polar Disorder, and these merely scratch the surface of what one finds. The veterans in those wards were combatants in wars they may or may not have understood, at ages similar to Talovic’s youthful eighteen years.

Many of these precious veterans have attempted suicide with various weapons or available household items; many have assaulted family members they love and responding law enforcement, not because they truly wanted to hurt anyone but because they were no longer in control. A break from reality, or psychotic episode, can occur rapidly or gradually, and the fact that Talovic was calmly walking through the mall does not indicate he was acting rationally or with legally defined criminal intent. A comparison of PTSD manifestations in a U.S. Military veteran and in Talovic is enlightening. Consider the tragic situation of just one Marine, Jonathan Schulze:

Schulze, a machine gunner and a corporal, had fought in Iraq in battles where Marine casualties were high. He had told his family that he felt guilty that he had lived and close friends had died [emphasis added]. He left the Marines in late 2005 after four years of service.

Schulze's stepmother said that she witnessed Jonathan telling VA staff workers in St. Cloud that he felt like killing himself. She said she also heard him tell a VA counselor over the phone the next day that he was suicidal. After that conversation he told his stepmother that he learned that he was No. 26 on a waiting list for admittance to the St. Cloud psychiatric unit.

The St. Cloud VA has no waiting list for its locked, acute psychiatric unit -- where suicidal or homicidal veterans would be taken . . . [emphasis added]

Two other members of Minnesota's congressional delegation expressed concern about the VA's ability to cope with a growing wave of troops returning from Iraq. Many of those veterans are expected to need counseling because of combat stress, lengthy separation from families, financial problems and other worries. [emphasis added]

"The hidden costs of this war are not being addressed," said Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minn., a member of the U.S. House Veterans' Affairs Committee and a veteran. "I've been deeply concerned. I think there's been almost nothing done to prepare for this."

Examine carefully the words or phrases emphasized in red. All of these were a part of daily life for Talovic. Survivor's guilt? Watching your friends and neighbors being exterminated while you manage to flee would cause that. This was also common among Jewish Holocaust survivors. Combat Stress? Being hunted for extermination in the middle of a war zone seems to fit that criteria. Separation from families? Talovic's extended family remain in Bosnia today. Financial problems? Talovic's family fled and lived in abandoned shacks, working odd jobs to survive in Bosnia until they could emigrate to America. In America Talovic's father and Talovic himself have worked many low wage jobs to provide for the family and save money to help bring family from Bosnia to the U.S. Other Worries? Wouldn't these other factors be enough? Add being a teenager in a new country, with few friends to the stresses already described, and a very different picture of Talovic emerges from the "Mall Killer is a Muslim" frenzy.

Note the use of the word "homicidal" by the VA hospital official. Clearly PTSD and other psychological problems stemming from war trauma have led some of our veterans to act on homicidal impulse. Is it so hard to imagine someone who had gone through what Talovic experienced acting similarly? Or is it just easier and more newsworthy to assume he killed because he was nominally Muslim?

Many who suffer mental illnesses are “high functioning” and it is only when you sit down to interview or visit with them does the paranoia become apparent. Talovic’s actions, although horrendous, likely had no connection to the U.S. War on Terror, the Iraq War, or jihad against America despite current events. America is where his family fled to in order to escape Bosnia and find safety. By all accounts, Talovic’s family had no ties to any groups sympathetic to radical Islam, and the FBI has ruled out terrorism in this incident. Talovic’s family worked various jobs in an effort to provide funds for extended family to emigrate to the U.S. as well. This does not appear to be the portrait of a jihadist family.

Ascribing Talovic’s actions to his religion itself or some jihadist mentality may have shock value in the headlines, but it omits the central factors of the incident: The perpetrator’s mental capacity and intent. Both of those were likely influenced tremendously by his childhood experiences in Bosnia. In our criminal justice codes, those with mental illness or even “temporary insanity” are judged by different and more compassionate standards than criminals with clear intent. While Talovic’s death in this incident prevents a definitive assessment of his intent, there is far more in his background that points to genocide trauma, rather than jihad, to explain his terrible actions.

DNC Led in Prayer for Global Conversion to Islam: Ignorance of Islamic Terminology Rampant in Washington

On Saturday, World Net Daily reported that at Friday’s Democratic National Committee (DNC) winter meeting, attendees bowed their heads and were led in prayer by a popular Michigan religious leader. The party usually associated with ACLU positions on prayer religion’s role in public life, appeared in its winter meeting to be eager to show its reverence for religious practice. On the surface this would appear to be a welcome change for the DNC, but when it comes to the DNC and its quest to cast itself as mainstream America, nothing is as it seems. As the DNC bowed and listened to a prayer seemingly for peace, brotherhood, and an end to global strife, what was actually prayed for by the religious leader went completely unrecognized and unchallenged by DNC members.

In a remarkable, but sadly not uncommon (Rep. Silvestre Reyes, Chairman House Intelligence Committee unaware of whether Al Qaeda was Sunni or Shiite), display of Washington’s chronic cultural ignorance of Islamic culture and symbolism, DNC members prayed for their own conversion to Islam, liberation of the world from religions other than Islam, the end of American and Israeli “occupations” in the Middle East, and the destruction of Israel. More troubling is that none of them appear to have realized they had done so.

The meaning of the prayer, spoken in English by Husham Al-Husainy, Shiite imam of the Karbalaa Islamic Education Center, a mosque in Dearborn, Michigan, was clearly understood by those with knowledge of Islamic symbolism, but not by any DNC members, many of whom already hold or aspire to occupy the most sensitive policy making positions within the US Government. Senators, Congressman, presidential aspirants, and key staffers, the power-wielders in the party now controlling Congress suffer from a deplorable ignorance of traditional, let alone radical Islam. Lest Republicans gloat about their rival colleagues’ shortcomings, a similar ignorance of Islam exists in that party as well, though displayed less transparently than Rep. Reyes and the DNC have illustrated.

Robert Spencer, Director of Jihad Watch, reviewed a transcript of the prayer and provided a concise explanation of terms as they relate to Islamic culture, history, and teachings from the Quran. The prayer was delivered as follows:

“In the name of God the most merciful, the most compassionate. We thank you, God, to bless us among your creations. We thank you, God, to make us as a great nation. We thank you God, to send us your messages through our father Abraham and Moses and Jesus and Muhammad. Through you, God, we unite. So guide us to the right path. The path of the people you bless, not the path of the people you doom. Help us God to liberate and fill this earth with justice and peace and love and equality. And help us to stop the war and violence, and oppression and occupation. Ameen.”

Spencer pointed out that in Islam, the term “straight path” refers to Islamic Sharia, the body of Islamic law that governs politics, economics, behaviors and all other aspects of life under Islamic rule. All other paths, or governmental forms, are errant and must be corrected. Likewise, the phrase “the path of the people you bless” refers to peoples living under Sharia law. All other religions or nations not under Sharia rule are doomed.

It is significant that the next sentence importunes God to “liberate and fill the earth with justice”. Liberate whom, and what form would justice take? “Liberation” in Islamic terminology denotes conversion of all nations to Islam, or liberation from errant religions, and “justice” equates to Sharia, the Islamic code of laws Muslims would implement after “liberating” nations oppressed by other religions, such as Judaism and Christianity.

Imam Al-Husainy concluded with the obligatory reference to Israel, calling for an end to the Israeli state and its presence on (occupation of) disputed Arab land, as well as and end to the US “occupation” of Iraq. To embrace a prayer with such references and wishes is ironically stunning for the DNC, which is supported with fierce (though clearly misguided) loyalty by American Jews. Donating to campaigns of candidates from a party that invites clerics to pray for global conversion to Islam is, one would reasonably conclude, not in the interest of members of any other religion or no religion at all. Under Sharia there is no special consideration or immunity granted to atheists, agnostics, or naturalists. ACLU secular crusaders would face beheading for attempting to separate Church and State under Sharia law.

That the DNC sought to demonstrate its conveniently new effort to appear religious by inviting an imam to pray is not objectionable. That the DNC did not recognize or have courage to criticize the content of the prayer should stir outrage among all Americans of either party and of all religions. Our elected officials and the parties funding them either lack basic knowledge of Islamic culture and the teachings of the Quran, or if they have such awareness lack the fortitude to point out and condemn thinly veiled calls for the overthrow of America and Israel, especially when those calls come from a popular imam.

Secretary of State Rice recently bowed to “political correctness”, referring to HAMAS as a “resistance movement” rather than a terrorist group (despite the State Department’s official designation of HAMAS as a terrorist organization). Even those tasked with recruiting allies in the War on Terror are afraid of offending terrorists by calling them terrorists. It should come as no surprise that the DNC imam had the audacity to pray for such things by invitation in front of a prominent political organization. That he did so and no one in Washington noticed or cared should be a clear warning sign to all who are not on the “straight path” that radical Islam is winning the political, media, and culture war here while our soldiers are fighting the physical war in the Middle East.


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