Imperial Hubris Series
Imperial Hubris by Michael Scheuer, 2004, Excerpts
The U.S. President, vice president, secretaries of state, justice, defense, and homeland security, the attorney general, the FBI director, the director of central intelligence, and endless numbers of experts, reporters, and pundits continue telling the Americans and the world that the United States is beating bin Laden by dismantling al Qaeda one man at a time; in the president’s words: “One by one, the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice.”
Thus, because of the pervasive imperial hubris that dominates the minds of our political, academic, social, media, and military elites, America is able and content to believe the Islamic world fails to understand the benign intent of U.S. foreign policy and its implementation. When U.S. leaders speak blithely and ad nauseum of building a democracy like our own in Afghanistan or Iraq or Burma or Russia or Liberia or Saudi Arabia, saying that it can be done speedily and on the cheap, they betray ignorance of foreign lands, cultures, and histories as well as the creeds and ambitions of other peoples.
It is comforting to American elites still refusing to see that U.S. government actions in the Islamic world are causing Muslims to attack the United States. The argument’s gist is that bin Laden, his allies, and their goals have been spawned by a “failed civilization” – one hostile to democratization, capitalism, and modernity, save for the tools of war – and that they are driven by both the realization that Islamic society is dying and a maniacal desire to destroy other civilizations that are successful and causing the demise of Islam. These men, the argument goes, recognize this failure, blame it on the West, and are lashing out with indiscriminate violence to spark an Armageddon-like battle with Western civilization. This line of analysis takes a brilliant, calculating, and patient foe like bin Laden and reduces him to the status of a madman, bloodthirsty and irrational.
And because our elites are so full of themselves, they think America is invulnerable; cannot imagine the rest of the world does not want to be like us; and believe an American empire in the twenty-first century not only is our destiny, but our duty to mankind, especially to the unwashed, unlettered, undemocratic, unwhite, unshaved, and antifeminist Muslim masses. Arrogance because the elites cannot believe a polyglot bunch of Arabs wearing robes, sporting scraggily beards, and squatting around campfires in Afghan deserts and mountains could pose a mortal threat to the United States.
One of the greatest dangers for Americans lies in continuing to believe – at the urging of senior U.S. leaders – that Muslims hate and attack us for what we are and think, rather than for what we do. The Islamic world is not offended by our democratic system of politics, guarantees of personal rights and civil liberties, and separation of church and state. What the United States does in formulating and implementing policies affecting the Muslim world, however, is infinitely more inflammatory.
Only when U.S. leaders stop believing and preaching that bin Laden and his allies are attacking us for what we are and what we think, and instead clearly state that they are attacking us for what we do, can we put aside our ill-advised and hallucinatory crusade for democracy – our current default. At that point, Americans can begin to intelligently discuss how this national security threat is to be defeated or, more precisely, to decide if status quo U.S. foreign policies toward the Islamic world benefit American enough to offset increasing levels of human and economic loss that will be the cost of unchanged policies.
General Sherman [Civil War, 1861-1875]:
“A fatal mistake in war is to underrate the strength, feeling and resources of an enemy.”
“Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.”
General Curtis Lemay [WWII & Cold War]:
“You have got to kill people, and when you have killed enough of them, they stop fighting.”
"There are no innocent civilians.”
“All war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier."
