Michael Scheuer, one of Ron Paul's key foreign policy advisors, has predicted in an interview televised on Fox News that the fighting in Afghanistan will worsen and spread to the United States.
Showing posts with label Michael Scheuer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Scheuer. Show all posts
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Michael Scheuer Predicts "Fighting In Our Streets" Due To Obama's Afghanistan Policy
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Michael Scheuer: State Dept. should publish names and personal info of Americans with ties to Israel
I wrote in March about Michael Scheuer's grossly hyperbolic and ill-considered piece in the National Journal in which he advocated that the U.S. not only leave NATO, but that it entirely disengage from Europe. (He headlined that piece ""Europe is a wheezing corpse". Read here.) I wrote that piece in the knowledge that no significant observer of world affairs could take such extreme views seriously, but knowing that Scheuer is still interviewed by journalists as if he were a legitimate expert on foreign affairs. To the television-viewing public, and apparently to the BBC, Fox News and NPR among others, he's the former CIA agent who had an impressive sounding role in the search for bin Laden in the 1990s.
In the course of writing my blog post, I discovered that Scheuer has started a blog which he calls Non-intervention.com. Scheuer is using that blog largely to write columns accusing American supporters of Israel of treason, and suggesting that the U.S. take harsh measures against both Israel and its supporters. As I wrote earlier today, he's also using the blog to bizarrely call for armed rebellion against the federal government, albeit in a vocabulary so antique as to be ignored or misunderstood by most readers. At the risk of having my blog become all-Scheuer, all-the-time, I've decided to share my thoughts about these proposals. After that, no more Scheuer for a while.
Ignore oversees threats, fight illusory domestic enemies instead
In a column entitled "Turn Biden's Humiliation to America's Advantage" dated March 12 (read here), Scheuer advocates cutting ties with Israel and subjecting supporters of Israel to scrutiny verging on arbitrary punishment. He also casts some very harsh words on those who are friendly to Israel: "abject and effete lickspittles" he calls them, and "Israel-firsters". By this, Scheuer equates friendliness to Israel with disloyalty to the U.S. and, amazingly, treason. (I realize that this seems hyperbolic, but I suggest that readers sample his blog posts before they conclude that it is.) Scheuer makes several modest proposals for the Israeli-Arab conflict, all of them strangely oriented toward making a bad situation worse, as if Scheuer is not satisfied with predicting Armageddon, but is intent on bringing it about. He writes:
Characterizing this proposal to stoke the flames of conflict as "getting tough with Israel", Scheuer writes that "the war’s outcome is irrelevant to America". He goes on to fantasize that, after such a war,
Scheuer, having thus suggested pouring gasoline on a tinderbox and applying lit matches, proposes additional measures to further fix the world. Here's what he writes:
Oremus et pro perfidis Judaeis
What could be more offensive, more deliberately offensive, to Jews than the invocation of that phrase in a debate on Israel? To state that Israel equals Nazi Germany, as some opponents of Israel do? Yes, that's more offensive. To state that Israel kills Palestinians as Jews killed Christ, as the Palestinian Protestant group Sabeel (among others) does? Yes... that's worse. The invocation of the traditionalist Catholic charge of Jewish perfidy isn't quite at that level, but it's close. It's especially offensive in the context of a column accusing Obama of being a "toady" to the Jewish state, and arguing that support for Israel is unpatriotic (read here). Here's the money quote:
Isolationist Paranoia Redux
The isolationist impulse is not a new one in this country. It has a history, a track record, and common features which place it in a political tradition of a sort. In the post-World War II era, the isolationist right, which had fallen into disrepute after Pearl Harbor, made a resurgence. Looking both for a reason for being and for scapegoats for their failures, they targeted the domestic left: disproportionately Jewish, well-educated, and urban. This focus was convenient for the later-day isolationists who wanted to fight Communism without intervening overseas. McCarthyism met the political requirements of those who followed the Republican right into sort of foreign policy blind alley. They were led to that dead end by domestic political considerations, found themselves without a mission, then had that political vacuum filled by ideologues like McCarthy and his ilk. McCarthyism let the right punish those who led the United States into fighting Nazism instead of Communism; and let them look backward and falsely place blame for "who lost China" without addressing the real issues of the then ongoing Cold War. The fact that this was a counter-productive, irrational, arbitrary, and cynical manipulation of real concerns somehow escaped the attention of a significant portion of the American public for many years. Now, many years later, this history has faded from memory -- hence the resurgence of John Birch Society paranoia, and of classic isolationism in the form of the Ron Paul campaign, the tea party movement and the paleo-conservative/libertarian/far-left coalition which advocates (at least in part) for a neo-McCarthyite response to support for Israel, conflating such support with neo-conservativism, elitism, Hollywood,Wall Street and, as Scheuer makes clear, Jewishness, albeit Jewishness of the current generation, not of the 1950s.
Michael Scheuer is a foreign policy advisor to Ron Paul (although Ron Paul supporters have complained in comments on this blog that I drawing attention to this fact is somehow unfair to Ron Paul).. As I've written in the past, Paul (like Scheuer) advocates isolationism, and even goes so far as to praise the isolationist movement of the early World War II era. He explicitly praises figures such as Charles Lindbergh, whose opposition to war verged on support for the Nazis (who they certainly helped by delaying U.S. opposition to Nazi aggression), and who explicitly scapegoated American Jews for drawing the U.S.into the war. Moreover, Ron Paul and other neo-isolationist supporters of Lindbergh completely overlook Lindbergh's associations with a cabal of far-right, anti-Roosevelt military officers, his close friendship with Nazi collaborators such as Alexis Carrel and his private expressions of admiration for the Nazis. Ron Paul goes so far as to say that Lindbergh and the isolationists were the truly patriotic Americans of their era -- just don't call them isolationists. Paul prefers that both he and his historical heroes be called "non-interventionists" and that this movement be regarded as being of a piece with George Washington's opposition to "foreign entanglements", a seemingly overarching principle which Washington clearly intended to avoid U.S. involvement in conflict between Britain and France. Scheuer has wrapped his isolationism in the mantle of Thomas Jefferson in his writings, apparently forgetting that Jefferson was a strong advocate of the idea that human rights were universal, and that Jefferson involved the United States in conflict with the Barbary pirates, and pursued what was, for its era, a robust foreign policy which made both allies and enemies. Washington and Jefferson were hardly the monolithic and doctrinaire ideologues Paul and Scheuer see them as. They weren't the isolationists of their era. That's what psychologists would call a projection. Paul and Scheuer see Washington and Jefferson as their mirror image, as Paul and Scheuer in powdered wigs. Such a distortion requires correction by an objective third party. Someone to tell Ron Paul and Michael Scheuer just how badly they misunderstand U.S. history. That could be alled an intervention.
UPDATE (June 4, 2010):
Scheuer has apparently taken his entire blog offline. I'm not sure why he did this, or whether it's permanent. I can see why he might want to cover his tracks by deleting the columns I've discussed here from the record.
I'm looking for cached/archived versions of his columns and will update the links in this post as soon as I find them.
UPDATE #2 (June 5, 2010):
At the currently cached homepage for Scheuer's website (here), there's an "Account Suspended" page. Why?
I've replaced the dead link in the article (the one that goes to Scheuer's now suspended blog) with a link to a cached version. While doing this, I noticed another post (cached version here) predicting a sort of "race war" scenario of Jews fighting Muslims on U.S. streets, this by way of pleading to end the U.S.-Israeli alliance before it's too late. This prediction was based on his viewing a video of the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, being shouted down by Muslim students while trying to address an audience at a California university. If Scheuer can leap from that to predicting war in the streets of this country, he gives Glenn Beck's fevered imagination a run for its money.
Still more. In this column he writes
...and...
That's a whole lot of demonstrably false right wing talking points wrapped in a whole lot of paranoid crazy.
Then there's the hysterically titled column The Tea Party vs. Blind Arrogance (read here), in which he states the following, thus demonstrating that the Tea Party (at least in his case) is blind arrogance.
In January, Scheuer infamously claimed in a C-SPAN interview that he was fired from a prestigious position with the Jamestown Institute as the result of a conspiracy by "Israel-firsters". He has gone on since that time to demonstrate in very stark terms why no self-respecting foreign policy think tank would want to be associated with his crackpot ideas. His employment troubles don't stem from a Jewish conspiracy, but from the distorted nature of his thinking about the world. It makes perfect sense that he can't understanding that. He can't understand a lot of things.
In the course of writing my blog post, I discovered that Scheuer has started a blog which he calls Non-intervention.com. Scheuer is using that blog largely to write columns accusing American supporters of Israel of treason, and suggesting that the U.S. take harsh measures against both Israel and its supporters. As I wrote earlier today, he's also using the blog to bizarrely call for armed rebellion against the federal government, albeit in a vocabulary so antique as to be ignored or misunderstood by most readers. At the risk of having my blog become all-Scheuer, all-the-time, I've decided to share my thoughts about these proposals. After that, no more Scheuer for a while.
Ignore oversees threats, fight illusory domestic enemies instead
In a column entitled "Turn Biden's Humiliation to America's Advantage" dated March 12 (read here), Scheuer advocates cutting ties with Israel and subjecting supporters of Israel to scrutiny verging on arbitrary punishment. He also casts some very harsh words on those who are friendly to Israel: "abject and effete lickspittles" he calls them, and "Israel-firsters". By this, Scheuer equates friendliness to Israel with disloyalty to the U.S. and, amazingly, treason. (I realize that this seems hyperbolic, but I suggest that readers sample his blog posts before they conclude that it is.) Scheuer makes several modest proposals for the Israeli-Arab conflict, all of them strangely oriented toward making a bad situation worse, as if Scheuer is not satisfied with predicting Armageddon, but is intent on bringing it about. He writes:
"(L)eave the combatants solely responsible for fighting until one, the other, or both are destroyed, or peace is made".
Characterizing this proposal to stoke the flames of conflict as "getting tough with Israel", Scheuer writes that "the war’s outcome is irrelevant to America". He goes on to fantasize that, after such a war,
"Washington can consider requests for restored relations with each entity, or with whichever survives. Palestine’s request would be mostly pro forma; it does not threaten America. Israel is different story..."Israel is different, he says, because its U.S. supporters are a domestic threat, a "neo-Copperhead fifth column". With this bizarre phrase, Scheuer compares American Zionsits both to Civil War-era "domestic subversives" who supported the Confederacy (read here), and to covert supporters of Franco who threatened to undermine the Republic during the Spanish Civil War (read here).
Scheuer, having thus suggested pouring gasoline on a tinderbox and applying lit matches, proposes additional measures to further fix the world. Here's what he writes:
Washington must insist that Israel take five actions to help destroy the U.S. citizen-led, Israel-First fifth column that has made Israel the most arrogant, avaricious, and treacherous U.S. ally. Americans always have served God and Caesar, but they abhor fellow citizens who serve a foreign Caesar, as do those who subordinate U.S. interests to their assessment of Israel’s needs. Four public Israeli government actions will focus loyal U.S. citizens on their disloyal countrymen, those who want their taxes spent and soldier-children killed in a religious war for Israel.
a.) Israel must list all U.S. intelligence and technology it has given or sold to third countries.So Scheuer, as starting points, would have Israel confess to subverting the U.S. government and deliberately attacking a U.S. ship. The possibility that these outrageous charges are false is not considered by Scheuer. He would have Israelis in the U.S.and Americans with dual citizenship singled out as suspects -- forced to reveal all their personal and business information to the State Dept. -- then have the State Dept. make these private record public. That such a gross violation of the Fourth Amendment should be advocated by someone who regards himself, like his candidate Ron Paul, a radical "Constitutionist", indicates just how distorted this movement's view of the document it claims to support really is. These people would destroy the constitution in order to save it, like a Vietnamese village. They would undo our liberties based on paranoid suspicions, all in the name of promoting liberty.
b.) Israel must identify all U.S. citizens who have or are serving its military and so have sworn allegiance to a foreign power.
c.) Israel must admit sponsoring anti-U.S. espionage by Pollard and others, and publicly name all U.S. citizens and front companies it has paid in the past or is now paying or assisting to commit treason against the United States.
d.) Israel must list all U.S. citizens, living and dead, to whom it has issued passports, in the following categories: (a) Senators, Congressmen, Cabinet members, and senior political appointees; (b) federal civil servants, especially diplomats and intelligence officers; (c) civilian and uniformed Pentagon employees; (d) journalists, academics, and entertainers; and (e) other citizens.
–The fifth Israeli public action is simple justice.
e.) Israel must publicly admit that it deliberately attacked the USS
Liberty in 1967.
Oremus et pro perfidis Judaeis
What could be more offensive, more deliberately offensive, to Jews than the invocation of that phrase in a debate on Israel? To state that Israel equals Nazi Germany, as some opponents of Israel do? Yes, that's more offensive. To state that Israel kills Palestinians as Jews killed Christ, as the Palestinian Protestant group Sabeel (among others) does? Yes... that's worse. The invocation of the traditionalist Catholic charge of Jewish perfidy isn't quite at that level, but it's close. It's especially offensive in the context of a column accusing Obama of being a "toady" to the Jewish state, and arguing that support for Israel is unpatriotic (read here). Here's the money quote:
He (i.e. Obama) ... should make a clear presentation to Americans about Israel’s perfidy.What are the crimes Scheuer believes Israel to be guilty of? First and foremost, he fears that Israel subverts U.S. sovereignty by exercising undo influence on our foreign policy via a covert yet all-powerful conspiracy. His evidence? That's where things get shaky. This kind of fear is always based largely in paranoia and Scheuer's is no exception, hence his reversion to traditional ways of poking fingers in the Jews' eyes. Here's his proof of the grand conspiracy:
Israel-Firsters ... weaken U.S. security from positions in the Congress, the federal bureaucracy, the media, and many Christian evangelical churches, as well from the pages of leading Israel-First journals like Commentary, the Weekly Standard, the National Review, and the Wall Street Journal...That's it. In Scheuer's world, support for Israel by definition equals putting Israeli interests before those of the U.S., and this, by definition, equals disloyalty and subversion. The fact that the federal government includes many supporters of Israel means for Scheuer that agents of a nefarious foreign are working to subvert the government from within. That few in the media share his paranoia indicates to Scheuer that the press too is part of the conspiracy. What he makes of the fact that the vast majority of U.S. citizens support Israel, one can only speculate. Those are the people who elect the Congress and President, who read the periodicals he cited, and who think his views are the ones that seem foreign. Are they a part of the conspiracy or its victims? Again, one can only speculate. Scheuer presumably would call the American electorate victims of Israel-First conspiracy until after election time, then, after they vote down the tea party candidate, resort to accusing them of being part of the problem. Of course, if the tea party candidate wins, all bets are off.
Isolationist Paranoia Redux
The isolationist impulse is not a new one in this country. It has a history, a track record, and common features which place it in a political tradition of a sort. In the post-World War II era, the isolationist right, which had fallen into disrepute after Pearl Harbor, made a resurgence. Looking both for a reason for being and for scapegoats for their failures, they targeted the domestic left: disproportionately Jewish, well-educated, and urban. This focus was convenient for the later-day isolationists who wanted to fight Communism without intervening overseas. McCarthyism met the political requirements of those who followed the Republican right into sort of foreign policy blind alley. They were led to that dead end by domestic political considerations, found themselves without a mission, then had that political vacuum filled by ideologues like McCarthy and his ilk. McCarthyism let the right punish those who led the United States into fighting Nazism instead of Communism; and let them look backward and falsely place blame for "who lost China" without addressing the real issues of the then ongoing Cold War. The fact that this was a counter-productive, irrational, arbitrary, and cynical manipulation of real concerns somehow escaped the attention of a significant portion of the American public for many years. Now, many years later, this history has faded from memory -- hence the resurgence of John Birch Society paranoia, and of classic isolationism in the form of the Ron Paul campaign, the tea party movement and the paleo-conservative/libertarian/far-left coalition which advocates (at least in part) for a neo-McCarthyite response to support for Israel, conflating such support with neo-conservativism, elitism, Hollywood,Wall Street and, as Scheuer makes clear, Jewishness, albeit Jewishness of the current generation, not of the 1950s.
Michael Scheuer is a foreign policy advisor to Ron Paul (although Ron Paul supporters have complained in comments on this blog that I drawing attention to this fact is somehow unfair to Ron Paul).. As I've written in the past, Paul (like Scheuer) advocates isolationism, and even goes so far as to praise the isolationist movement of the early World War II era. He explicitly praises figures such as Charles Lindbergh, whose opposition to war verged on support for the Nazis (who they certainly helped by delaying U.S. opposition to Nazi aggression), and who explicitly scapegoated American Jews for drawing the U.S.into the war. Moreover, Ron Paul and other neo-isolationist supporters of Lindbergh completely overlook Lindbergh's associations with a cabal of far-right, anti-Roosevelt military officers, his close friendship with Nazi collaborators such as Alexis Carrel and his private expressions of admiration for the Nazis. Ron Paul goes so far as to say that Lindbergh and the isolationists were the truly patriotic Americans of their era -- just don't call them isolationists. Paul prefers that both he and his historical heroes be called "non-interventionists" and that this movement be regarded as being of a piece with George Washington's opposition to "foreign entanglements", a seemingly overarching principle which Washington clearly intended to avoid U.S. involvement in conflict between Britain and France. Scheuer has wrapped his isolationism in the mantle of Thomas Jefferson in his writings, apparently forgetting that Jefferson was a strong advocate of the idea that human rights were universal, and that Jefferson involved the United States in conflict with the Barbary pirates, and pursued what was, for its era, a robust foreign policy which made both allies and enemies. Washington and Jefferson were hardly the monolithic and doctrinaire ideologues Paul and Scheuer see them as. They weren't the isolationists of their era. That's what psychologists would call a projection. Paul and Scheuer see Washington and Jefferson as their mirror image, as Paul and Scheuer in powdered wigs. Such a distortion requires correction by an objective third party. Someone to tell Ron Paul and Michael Scheuer just how badly they misunderstand U.S. history. That could be alled an intervention.
UPDATE (June 4, 2010):
Scheuer has apparently taken his entire blog offline. I'm not sure why he did this, or whether it's permanent. I can see why he might want to cover his tracks by deleting the columns I've discussed here from the record.
I'm looking for cached/archived versions of his columns and will update the links in this post as soon as I find them.
UPDATE #2 (June 5, 2010):
At the currently cached homepage for Scheuer's website (here), there's an "Account Suspended" page. Why?
I've replaced the dead link in the article (the one that goes to Scheuer's now suspended blog) with a link to a cached version. While doing this, I noticed another post (cached version here) predicting a sort of "race war" scenario of Jews fighting Muslims on U.S. streets, this by way of pleading to end the U.S.-Israeli alliance before it's too late. This prediction was based on his viewing a video of the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, being shouted down by Muslim students while trying to address an audience at a California university. If Scheuer can leap from that to predicting war in the streets of this country, he gives Glenn Beck's fevered imagination a run for its money.
Still more. In this column he writes
In the ongoing debate over the seven attorneys hired by the Department of Justice after working pro bono to defend terrorists is drifting away from what I think is the main point of the issue — the ardent desire of Barack Obama to surround himself with people who either hate America or are intent on fundamentally changing everything America has traditionally respected and honored.
...and...
(President Obama) appointed as his chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, a man who deserted America to stand with Israel’s armed forces during the 1990-91 Gulf War, and has now given this man access to the nation’s most sensitive national security information....
wanted to appoint a self-avowed communist to work on his staff in the White House... appointed a woman to the Supreme Court who out of her own mouth admitted she was a bigot — Latina’s are better judges then white guys... (and) sent Cass Sunstein to the Department of Justice, a man who the media report champions legal representation for dogs in court; regards unborn human beings as a “handful of cells”; and believes the government should decide about who and who does not get life-preserving health care.
That's a whole lot of demonstrably false right wing talking points wrapped in a whole lot of paranoid crazy.
Then there's the hysterically titled column The Tea Party vs. Blind Arrogance (read here), in which he states the following, thus demonstrating that the Tea Party (at least in his case) is blind arrogance.
(President Obama) and all recent presidents have conducted a war on Christianity in America under the banner of the “separation of church and state.” Falsely claiming that they are doing the Founders’ work, these men and women, through their actions and appointments, have aided — or at least have done nothing to stop — the creation of “rights” that are nothing less than attacks on Christian beliefs. Whether by eradicating the term “Christmas” from our public lexicon; by championing nearly every kind of sexual deviance, or by facilitating the murder of 45-plus million unborn Americans by defending and perpetuating a Supreme Court decision even more merciless, anti-human, and lethal than Dred Scott, our political leaders have a message that can only read: “To hell with American Christians, we regard them as out-dated simpletons, we hate their God, and we will create a federal government that takes His place.” [NB: Other religions of course are exempt from the “separation of church and state” sanction. They are, rather, to be favored by our national government and with our tax money. Tyrannical Islamic theocracies are protected by the U.S. military and Islam is called a “religion of peace” whose young men just happen to be killing our soldiers and Marines, and the “Jewish state” receives tens of billions of dollars annually to help maintain its theocracy and involve our soldier-children in its expansionism and endless religious war.
In January, Scheuer infamously claimed in a C-SPAN interview that he was fired from a prestigious position with the Jamestown Institute as the result of a conspiracy by "Israel-firsters". He has gone on since that time to demonstrate in very stark terms why no self-respecting foreign policy think tank would want to be associated with his crackpot ideas. His employment troubles don't stem from a Jewish conspiracy, but from the distorted nature of his thinking about the world. It makes perfect sense that he can't understanding that. He can't understand a lot of things.
Michael Scheuer's case for armed rebellion
Outraged at Rand Paul's poor performance on the Rachel Maddow program last week, during which Paul came out against the Civil Rights Act's ban on racist discrimination by public facilities, Ron Paul advisor Michael Scheuer has written a bizarre screed which actually goes so far as to make the case for armed rebellion against the U.S. government. (Read here: Maddow and the Obamas: Killers of hope, spurs of rebellion | Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention.com.) Scheuer writes that Maddow's interview of Paul was an "attack", then goes on to describe Maddow as an "extremist" and an advocate of "a warmed over version of the 1920s’ Bloomsbury ideology: effete, secular, socialist, pacifistic, elitist, and libertine." He writes that "(a)nyone disagreeing with her ... is not just wrong but perverse, racist, badly educated, antiquarian, and could only come from the scum of the earth". (I suppose he means that these anti-Maddow anti-elitists are regarded or portrayed in this manner, not that he believes this to be true.) He also writes that Maddow advocates that the U.S. "lap up humiliation from Israel and Mexico".
Scheuer goes on to oddly single out Michelle Obama for condemnation as an "elitist", citing as evidence only Mrs. Obama's statement that she was proud of her country for nominating a black candidate and the fact that she attended ivy league universities.
Scheuer goes on to oddly single out Michelle Obama for condemnation as an "elitist", citing as evidence only Mrs. Obama's statement that she was proud of her country for nominating a black candidate and the fact that she attended ivy league universities.
Typical of the tea party right and Ron Paul supporters, Scheuer goes on to make much of the fact that some presidential appointees are referred to as "czars", although Scheuer seems to mistakenly believe that this is an innovation of the Obama administration. In fact, this harmless term of art for an appointee who heads some significant office but does not require congressional approval, was an innovation of the FDR administration. It doesn't refer in any way to elitism, arbitrary exercise of power, socialism (!), or any of the other absurd imputations made by the teabag right. In fact, the George W. Bush administration had far more "czars" than the Obama administration does. (Read here.)
Scheuer then runs through a laundry list of far-right talking points, along the way calling the American Medical Association "murderers for hire" because its members "have murdered... more than 47 million unborn Americans".
He calls upon private citizens along the border with Mexico to take up arms, writing that they should
He calls upon private citizens along the border with Mexico to take up arms, writing that they should
arm themselves to protect their kith and kin against the brigands flowing across the southern border and the federal officials eager to prosecute U.S. citizens and defend the brigands.
Don't be distracted by Scheuer's antique vocabulary. He's saying that private citizens should take military action against people they believe to be illegal immigrants, and, astoundingly, against federal officials! How Scheuer expects federal authorities to protect the border while under attack from his band of amateur border agents, he doesn't bother to explain.
After running through his extremist bill of particulars against the "elitists" he thinks are ruining this country, singling out both the federal government and "Hollywood" for particularly strong approbation, Scheuer offers a modest proposal for a solution. Revolution. He recruits two of America's greatest revolutionaries as posthumous (and therefor involutary) supporters for his cause: Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson.
So what can Americans do when words, appeals, patience, demonstrations, elections, and petitions have long lacked impact; have no current impact; and appear to have no chance of future impact? That question is yet to be decided. But in thinking about such things, one can fruitfully turn to the Founders. In the great stock of wise guidance they left for posterity, for example, one finds powerful and sobering words written by John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson in 1775. After describing Britain’s flagrant violation of the colonists’ rights, and recounting the King’s refusal to hear and rectify the colonists’ repeated and peacefully presented grievances, Dickinson and Jefferson wrote a paper that, in part, said:
“We are reduced to the alternative of choosing an unconditional submission to the tyranny of [the king's] irritated ministers, or resistance by force. The latter is our choice. We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery. Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we have received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness that inevitably awaits them, if we basely entail hereditary bondage upon them. …
With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, [and] the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance, employ [them] for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die Free-men rather than live Slaves.”
As Americans move forward, then, their heritage as free men; the responsibilities imposed by their duty to posterity and the Declaration of Independence (1776); and the Founders’ wisdom together constitute a formidable arsenal for fueling a campaign that seeks peaceful political change by any and all possible means, or – as a very last resort — armed redress of grievances. It also is an arsenal that is timeless and indestructible; it cannot be invalidated by the words or actions of our coercive political elites and their media and academic apologists. Whether and when Americans draw on this repository of sanity, self-reliance, courage, and liberty to restore the constitution is up to them.
And, by the way, Dickinson and Jefferson entitled their paper “A Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms.” And far from being the conclusion of just the two men, the paper was published by the Continental Congress on 6 July 1775 — in the name of all Americans.
I guess that Scheuer was pretty upset by Rachel Maddow's interview of Rand Paul if he resorts to calling for the armed overthrow of the government in reaction.
Interestingly, this extreme, irrational reaction has garnered support among a certain sector of the electorate who are more comfortable with doctrinaire explosions such as this than they are with rational political discourse. I refer of course to Ron Paul supporters. At the official forum of the Ron Paul presidential campaign in exile, known alternately as the "Ron Paul Forums" or "Liberty Forest", Scheuer's column has gotten raves. (Read here.) It's a special breed of patriot and "Constitutionalist" who calls for the overthrow of the government when their candidate performs badly on television.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Michael Scheuer wants the U.S. out of NATO: "Europe is a wheezing corpse"
That's how Michael Scheuer responded to a question posed by the National Journal to a panel of experts on national security issues concerning U.S.-European relations. The question, headlined Can America Count On Europe Anymore?, asked:
Scheuer's answer to this bears the startling headline "Europe is a wheezing corpse". It demonstrates in stark terms that Scheuer's opinions about foreign policy have become extreme, ill-considered and, on several levels, xenophobic. He writes:
Gates' NATO speech was intended to show the other nations of NATO the importance of their military alliance with the U.S., to raise the spector of that alliance falling by the wayside, and to lobby and shame them not to abandon their commitment to it. By raising the idea that, should current trends continue, the U.S. would increasingly look outside Western Europe for military alliances, Gates attempted to put the fear of God in our NATO allies by implying that NATO is more valuable to Europe than the U.S. Scheuer's column takes this view to its extreme, arguing that the nations of Europe have nothing at all to offer the U.S. as military allies, then counters Gates by arguing that this is somehow a good thing. These ideas, and the others expressed by Scheuer in his column, are ill-considered for several reasons.
Scheuer, unlike Gates, belittles European contributions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and completely disregards the importance of both European counter-terrorism efforts and intelligence produced by European nations to our counter-terrorism efforts -- subjects with which Scheuer should be familiar from his work with the CIA. Rather than seeking greater support for the U.S. by our NATO allies, Scheuer spurns these allies, saying that we don't want them and don't need them. This assessment of NATO seems to be rooted more in ideologically based isolationist opposition to foreign alliances than in sound analysis of the risks and benefits of cutting off such alliances. Scheuer's ideologically based rejection of Europe, verging on hysteria, contrasts sharply with Gates' pragmatic, cagey approach. Instead of working to build real U.S. strength by strengthening alliances, as is Gates, Scheuer seeks to cut off alliances out of an illusory strength.
Scheuer's utter rejection of U.S. connections with Europe as somehow elitist is based in part on an archaic American cultural xenophobia. The United States is arguably the cultural capitol of the world, and has nothing to fear from cultural commerce with Europe. Scheuer's dismissal of Europe as culturally irrelevant to the U.S. is an echo of the isolationist past, rooted both in a fear of the alien and a sense of cultural inferiority. These views have no relevance at all to the current world which is characterized by ease of commerce and communication over international borders, diminishing the sense of difference. Such commerce has driven a shift of power from governments to corporations and individuals, something which a purportedly small government, laissez-faire conservative like Scheuer should support. Judging by the absurd terms with which he characterizes ties to Europe, Scheuer seems unable to see past his own prejudices to fully consider this issue in pragmatic or coherent ideological terms.
Scheuer goes on to make a series of shocking and false statements concerning Kosovo, citing these as a basis to argue that the U.S. should leave NATO. He writes that the United States tore Kosovo away from Serbia and created an "Islamic state", thus giving the false impression that Kosovo is an Islamist theocracy. Then, he asserts without supporting argument that the establishment of this purported "Islamic" Kosovo" lit a fuse which will eventually blow Europe up. Based on these invented facts and on non-existent logic, he argues that U.S. must withdraw from NATO. Scheuer even goes so far as to say that Serbia (which he describes as "Orthodox Serbia") would be right to invade and retake "Islamic Kosovo". Such fantasies, veering between nightmares of Muslim killing Serb and dreams of Christian reconquest, would be more at home in Serbian or Russian far-right propaganda than in a sane argument about U.S. foreign policy. They of course have no bearing on a serious consideration of whether the U.S. should remain in NATO.
Kosovo is anything but the theocratic threat to secular democracy that Scheuer fears. Read what Michael Totten wrote about Kosovo in the Wall Street Journal (here): that Kosovo is "overwhelmingly pro-American", has excellent relations with Israel, and that most Muslims in Kosovo follow a modern, moderate Islam which sets it apart from most other Muslim nations. In fact, Kosovo has been shunned by most Arab nations for precisely these reasons. Scheuer seems to be following the Serbian nationalist party line in attributing incidents of anti-Serbian violence in Kosova to a government-sponsored jihad rather than to ethnic conflict and backlash for Serbian oppression. Beyond this, and at the heart of his logical fallacy, he also makes no argument whatsoever to support his contention that Kosovo is a tinderbox which will set off a continent-wide Christian-Muslim conflict. That sort of wild-eyed fear mongering does not argue persuasively for the United States to abandon its NATO allies.
Taking fear-mongering and xenophobia to a level approaching bigotry, Scheuer next makes a series of statements concerning Europe's Muslim population which attempt to argue that their presence makes European nations incapable of countering Islamist aggression. This argument (such as it is an argument at all -- it's merely an assertion) again ignores the efforts which European nations actually do make to counter such aggression. If anything, the Muslim presence in Europe makes prevention of terrorism a greater priority to Europe than to the U.S. It is true that European nations frequently accommodate Islamist intolerance in the name of countering intolerance of Muslims, but this in no way should diminish recognition of European efforts to balance, firstly, individual liberties with security needs, and, secondly, the interests of its minorities with the interests of the nation as a whole. These are balances to which Scheuer seems indifferent. Worse than that, Scheuer blames ethnic minorities, the vast majority of whom are innocent bystanders to conflicts about geopolitical issues, for decisions and trends far outside their influence. This is the stuff of the National Front or British National Party and has no place at all in a mainstream American forum. Whatever differences exist between the United States and its various NATO allies, attempts to blame European Muslims for such differences verge on bigotry and should be rejected.
Lastly, Scheuer says that United States government's "phone should be off the hook" with respect to Greece -- apparently referring to Greece's current fiscal crisis. The idea that Scheuer proposes -- ignoring the problem because it doesn't effect us -- is the sort of head in the sand approach to foreign crises that, again, seems to derive more from 1930's isolationism than from contemporary thinking. The U.S. and every other country need to pay close attention to economic crises on that scale wherever and whenever they occur -- no one's phone should be off the hook. The argument that we shouldn't care enough to help in any way is so vague and overly broad as to be both meaningless and dangerous. It derives from a fog of ideological bias, and ignores, much as opposition to government intervention to stave off the collapse of the U.S. financial system ignored, the very real risk that a second Great Depression could occur. While current economic conditions may prevent direct intervention by the U.S., the idea that it should not use its still considerable influence in any way to stabilize Greece's currency makes no sense even from the exclusively self-interested American standpoint espoused by Scheuer. The world's economies are simply too inter-connected to endorse the economic isolation he either believes still exists or advocates returning to.
Looking for a common thread in Scheuer's scatter-shot column, each item reflects defeatism with respect to NATO in particular and alliances in general. He frames issues in terms that make every problem seem insoluble, every goal seem unattainable and every common interest seem irrelevant. This school of isolationism is more interested in marshaling arguments in support of predetermined conclusions than they are in pursuing objective analysis and problem-solving policy recommendations. By instilling paranoia about alliances, isolationists such as Scheuer seek to create in the public mind illusory problems that only they can solve. It's a global con game.
Scheuer has previously argued at great length that Israel is "expendable", to use his word -- of no use at all as an ally to the U.S., and without even the right to exist. He has gone so far as to argue that Americans who differ with his extreme views about Israel do so out of disloyalty to their country, calling them "Israel firsters" and a "fifth column". He has recently taken this to a new level by publishing a column in which he argues that the threat to national security presented by Israel compels the U.S. to demand that those dual citizenship or other formal connections to Israel submit their names, addresses and information about their activities to the federal government. He also literally advocates that this information concerning every Israeli-American be published by the State Dept., shockingly singling out Israelis to be subject to an invasion of privacy which would certainly threaten their civil liberties and personal safety. (I hope to write something about that shortly.) Now he has also declared Europe to be "expendable". That he also considers disagreement with his views concerning Europe equivalent to being disloyal to the United States is reflected in the harshness of his language. All of us traitors who care about Europe and Israel just make him want to puke.
While it may be tempting to dismiss Scheuer's ravings as the stuff of talk radio or teaparty rallies, we shouldn't do so. By dint of his former position in the CIA, Scheuer is still regarded as an expert on national security and foreign affairs , writing books and columns, giving interviews to a wide range of media outlets (especially when bin Laden is in the news), and advising politicians, such as Ron Paul, in whose 2008 presidential campaign he played an advisory role. So long as foolish ideas such as his are taken seriously and have influence, they need to be countered.
"The demilitarization of Europe -- where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it -- has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st," Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared in a Feb. 23 speech to NATO officers and others at the National Defense University in Washington.
Is Gates right? What exactly does "the demilitarization of Europe" mean for U.S. national security interests? Should Americans care if Europe has to live in the shadow of a militarily superior post-Soviet Russia? Is NATO, alas, a lost cause?
Gates' perspective also suggests that, unless the United States is to go it alone in the world, it will need to cultivate partners among rising nation-states, such as India and Brazil, that are more or less U.S.-friendly (at least not enemies) and, unlike Europe, are rebuilding their militaries. In short, should the U.S. be planning for a post-Europe world? Does Europe still matter? Can we count on Europe any more?
Scheuer's answer to this bears the startling headline "Europe is a wheezing corpse". It demonstrates in stark terms that Scheuer's opinions about foreign policy have become extreme, ill-considered and, on several levels, xenophobic. He writes:
Gates' NATO speech was intended to show the other nations of NATO the importance of their military alliance with the U.S., to raise the spector of that alliance falling by the wayside, and to lobby and shame them not to abandon their commitment to it. By raising the idea that, should current trends continue, the U.S. would increasingly look outside Western Europe for military alliances, Gates attempted to put the fear of God in our NATO allies by implying that NATO is more valuable to Europe than the U.S. Scheuer's column takes this view to its extreme, arguing that the nations of Europe have nothing at all to offer the U.S. as military allies, then counters Gates by arguing that this is somehow a good thing. These ideas, and the others expressed by Scheuer in his column, are ill-considered for several reasons.
Scheuer, unlike Gates, belittles European contributions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and completely disregards the importance of both European counter-terrorism efforts and intelligence produced by European nations to our counter-terrorism efforts -- subjects with which Scheuer should be familiar from his work with the CIA. Rather than seeking greater support for the U.S. by our NATO allies, Scheuer spurns these allies, saying that we don't want them and don't need them. This assessment of NATO seems to be rooted more in ideologically based isolationist opposition to foreign alliances than in sound analysis of the risks and benefits of cutting off such alliances. Scheuer's ideologically based rejection of Europe, verging on hysteria, contrasts sharply with Gates' pragmatic, cagey approach. Instead of working to build real U.S. strength by strengthening alliances, as is Gates, Scheuer seeks to cut off alliances out of an illusory strength.
Scheuer's utter rejection of U.S. connections with Europe as somehow elitist is based in part on an archaic American cultural xenophobia. The United States is arguably the cultural capitol of the world, and has nothing to fear from cultural commerce with Europe. Scheuer's dismissal of Europe as culturally irrelevant to the U.S. is an echo of the isolationist past, rooted both in a fear of the alien and a sense of cultural inferiority. These views have no relevance at all to the current world which is characterized by ease of commerce and communication over international borders, diminishing the sense of difference. Such commerce has driven a shift of power from governments to corporations and individuals, something which a purportedly small government, laissez-faire conservative like Scheuer should support. Judging by the absurd terms with which he characterizes ties to Europe, Scheuer seems unable to see past his own prejudices to fully consider this issue in pragmatic or coherent ideological terms.
Scheuer goes on to make a series of shocking and false statements concerning Kosovo, citing these as a basis to argue that the U.S. should leave NATO. He writes that the United States tore Kosovo away from Serbia and created an "Islamic state", thus giving the false impression that Kosovo is an Islamist theocracy. Then, he asserts without supporting argument that the establishment of this purported "Islamic" Kosovo" lit a fuse which will eventually blow Europe up. Based on these invented facts and on non-existent logic, he argues that U.S. must withdraw from NATO. Scheuer even goes so far as to say that Serbia (which he describes as "Orthodox Serbia") would be right to invade and retake "Islamic Kosovo". Such fantasies, veering between nightmares of Muslim killing Serb and dreams of Christian reconquest, would be more at home in Serbian or Russian far-right propaganda than in a sane argument about U.S. foreign policy. They of course have no bearing on a serious consideration of whether the U.S. should remain in NATO.
Kosovo is anything but the theocratic threat to secular democracy that Scheuer fears. Read what Michael Totten wrote about Kosovo in the Wall Street Journal (here): that Kosovo is "overwhelmingly pro-American", has excellent relations with Israel, and that most Muslims in Kosovo follow a modern, moderate Islam which sets it apart from most other Muslim nations. In fact, Kosovo has been shunned by most Arab nations for precisely these reasons. Scheuer seems to be following the Serbian nationalist party line in attributing incidents of anti-Serbian violence in Kosova to a government-sponsored jihad rather than to ethnic conflict and backlash for Serbian oppression. Beyond this, and at the heart of his logical fallacy, he also makes no argument whatsoever to support his contention that Kosovo is a tinderbox which will set off a continent-wide Christian-Muslim conflict. That sort of wild-eyed fear mongering does not argue persuasively for the United States to abandon its NATO allies.
Taking fear-mongering and xenophobia to a level approaching bigotry, Scheuer next makes a series of statements concerning Europe's Muslim population which attempt to argue that their presence makes European nations incapable of countering Islamist aggression. This argument (such as it is an argument at all -- it's merely an assertion) again ignores the efforts which European nations actually do make to counter such aggression. If anything, the Muslim presence in Europe makes prevention of terrorism a greater priority to Europe than to the U.S. It is true that European nations frequently accommodate Islamist intolerance in the name of countering intolerance of Muslims, but this in no way should diminish recognition of European efforts to balance, firstly, individual liberties with security needs, and, secondly, the interests of its minorities with the interests of the nation as a whole. These are balances to which Scheuer seems indifferent. Worse than that, Scheuer blames ethnic minorities, the vast majority of whom are innocent bystanders to conflicts about geopolitical issues, for decisions and trends far outside their influence. This is the stuff of the National Front or British National Party and has no place at all in a mainstream American forum. Whatever differences exist between the United States and its various NATO allies, attempts to blame European Muslims for such differences verge on bigotry and should be rejected.
Lastly, Scheuer says that United States government's "phone should be off the hook" with respect to Greece -- apparently referring to Greece's current fiscal crisis. The idea that Scheuer proposes -- ignoring the problem because it doesn't effect us -- is the sort of head in the sand approach to foreign crises that, again, seems to derive more from 1930's isolationism than from contemporary thinking. The U.S. and every other country need to pay close attention to economic crises on that scale wherever and whenever they occur -- no one's phone should be off the hook. The argument that we shouldn't care enough to help in any way is so vague and overly broad as to be both meaningless and dangerous. It derives from a fog of ideological bias, and ignores, much as opposition to government intervention to stave off the collapse of the U.S. financial system ignored, the very real risk that a second Great Depression could occur. While current economic conditions may prevent direct intervention by the U.S., the idea that it should not use its still considerable influence in any way to stabilize Greece's currency makes no sense even from the exclusively self-interested American standpoint espoused by Scheuer. The world's economies are simply too inter-connected to endorse the economic isolation he either believes still exists or advocates returning to.
Looking for a common thread in Scheuer's scatter-shot column, each item reflects defeatism with respect to NATO in particular and alliances in general. He frames issues in terms that make every problem seem insoluble, every goal seem unattainable and every common interest seem irrelevant. This school of isolationism is more interested in marshaling arguments in support of predetermined conclusions than they are in pursuing objective analysis and problem-solving policy recommendations. By instilling paranoia about alliances, isolationists such as Scheuer seek to create in the public mind illusory problems that only they can solve. It's a global con game.
Scheuer has previously argued at great length that Israel is "expendable", to use his word -- of no use at all as an ally to the U.S., and without even the right to exist. He has gone so far as to argue that Americans who differ with his extreme views about Israel do so out of disloyalty to their country, calling them "Israel firsters" and a "fifth column". He has recently taken this to a new level by publishing a column in which he argues that the threat to national security presented by Israel compels the U.S. to demand that those dual citizenship or other formal connections to Israel submit their names, addresses and information about their activities to the federal government. He also literally advocates that this information concerning every Israeli-American be published by the State Dept., shockingly singling out Israelis to be subject to an invasion of privacy which would certainly threaten their civil liberties and personal safety. (I hope to write something about that shortly.) Now he has also declared Europe to be "expendable". That he also considers disagreement with his views concerning Europe equivalent to being disloyal to the United States is reflected in the harshness of his language. All of us traitors who care about Europe and Israel just make him want to puke.
While it may be tempting to dismiss Scheuer's ravings as the stuff of talk radio or teaparty rallies, we shouldn't do so. By dint of his former position in the CIA, Scheuer is still regarded as an expert on national security and foreign affairs , writing books and columns, giving interviews to a wide range of media outlets (especially when bin Laden is in the news), and advising politicians, such as Ron Paul, in whose 2008 presidential campaign he played an advisory role. So long as foolish ideas such as his are taken seriously and have influence, they need to be countered.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Michael Scheuer: terrorists should focus on Israel, not the U.S.
In an interview televised on C-SPAN on January 4, former CIA bin Laden Unit Chief Michael Scheuer advocated that the United States should "dissuade" terrorists from focusing their anger on the U.S. by "persuad(ing) them to focus their anger on what they themselves perceive as their enemy: the governments that ... oppress them and Israel". His comment is viewable at 10:30 of the below-linked video:
C-SPAN Video Player - Michael Scheuer, Former CIA Bin Laden Unit Chief (1996-99)
Following this modest proposal to throw Israel to the wolves, Scheuer received the following grossly anti-Semitic question from a caller called John from Franklin, NY who identified himself as a political independent (viewable at 15:00 of the above-linked video). Question and answer are presented below in their entirety. Scheuer's response is instructive:
After that statement of agreement with a grossly bigoted phone caller, Scheuer went on to state an opinion so bizarre that, under ordinary circumstances, would stand out; in this context, however, its illogic seems minor by comparison. Scheuer said that he opposes trying accused terrorists in U.S. courts, arguing that, because Muslims consider these defendants innocent of any crime, when they're convicted, it makes our courts seem biased against Muslims. For that reason, Scheuer supports holding accused terrorists without trial. By his thinking, the Muslim world would approve of the U.S. holding accused terrorists prisoner indefinitely without trial more than they would support the accused terrorists getting trials. (At 20:00 of the video.)
Who supports Scheuer's peculiar views? One indication is who publishes his work on their websites. Scheuer's next call came from a supporter identified as Tim from Crawford, Virgina. Tim has published Scheuer's writings on his several anti-Semitic websites, at least one of which is largely devoted to promoting disinformation blaming Jews for carrying out 9/11.
Scheuer didn't really address those rhetorical questions in his response, so that is something we must look forward to in a later interview. But the question does give some insight into his base of support.
From a psychological perspective, it's instructive to take a look at how Scheuer's paranoid view of Israeli influence has created situations which seem to him to confirm that paranoia. He charges that AIPAC (which he pronounces "eye-pack") and other unnamed Zionists got him fired from his position as a Senior Fellow and columnist for the Jamestown Foundation, an anti-terrorism think-tank, based on a single comment he made. He says (at 39:20 in the video) that he
Scheuer believes that his extreme views, no matter how much they diverge from those of the Jamestown Foundation, should be promoted by that group; and if the Jamestown Foundation chooses not to do so, it must be the result of a Zionist conspiracy. I don't have any inside information concerning why the leadership of the Jamestown Foundation fired Scheuer, but the idea that it was the single comment he cites as the reason strains credulity. Scheuer has a record of extreme -- even paranoid -- opinions on this subject of Israel -- a record which is getting longer by the day. His explanation of his firing is perfectly consistent with that paranoid worldview.
That firing might have been motivated by Scheuer's bizarre statement that "the U.S. government was marching to the drummer of al Qaeda" (at 0:50 0f the below-embedded video). He doesn't explain how the U.S. can be controlled by both the Israel Lobby and al Qaeda.
Getting back to his C-SPAN interview, Scheuer wrapped it up by talking himself through the following logical wormhole:
Elsewhere in this interview, Scheuer argues that whether or not a foreign nation is democratic is of no importance to the United States. He argues that the only factor meriting consideration in determining United States foreign policy is a narrowly defined view of what is in the our immediate national interest. To him, a dictatorship is as good as a democracy, so long as we come out ahead. What he doesn't understand is that the world he advocates is not one in which the United States in particular and democracy in general would be welcome. Maybe that is why the Jamestown Foundation fired him.
C-SPAN Video Player - Michael Scheuer, Former CIA Bin Laden Unit Chief (1996-99)
Following this modest proposal to throw Israel to the wolves, Scheuer received the following grossly anti-Semitic question from a caller called John from Franklin, NY who identified himself as a political independent (viewable at 15:00 of the above-linked video). Question and answer are presented below in their entirety. Scheuer's response is instructive:
John from Franklin: I for one am sick and tired of all these Jews coming on C-SPAN and other stations and pushing us to go to war against our Muslim friends. They're willing to spend the last drop of American blood and treasure to get their way in the world. They have way too much power in this country. People like Wolfowitz and Feith and the other neo-cons -- they jewed us into Iraq -- and now we're going to spend the next 60 years rehabilitating our soldiers -- I'm sick and tired of it.
C-SPAN host: Any comment on that?
Scheuer: Yeah. I think that American foreign policy is ultimately up to the American people. One of the big things we have not been able to discuss for the past 30 years is the Israelis. Whether we want to be involved in fighting Israel's wars in the future is something that Americans should be able to talk about. They may vote yes. They may want to see their kids killed in Iraq or somewhere else to defend Israel. But the question is: we need to talk about it. Ultimately Israel is a country that is of no particular worth the United States.
C-SPAN host: You mean strategically?
Scheuer: Strategically. They have no resources we need. Their manpower is minimal. Their association with us is a negative for the United States. Now that's a fact. What you want to do about that fact is entirely different. But for anyone to stand up in the United States and day that support for Israel doesn't hurt us in the Muslim world is to just defy reality.
After that statement of agreement with a grossly bigoted phone caller, Scheuer went on to state an opinion so bizarre that, under ordinary circumstances, would stand out; in this context, however, its illogic seems minor by comparison. Scheuer said that he opposes trying accused terrorists in U.S. courts, arguing that, because Muslims consider these defendants innocent of any crime, when they're convicted, it makes our courts seem biased against Muslims. For that reason, Scheuer supports holding accused terrorists without trial. By his thinking, the Muslim world would approve of the U.S. holding accused terrorists prisoner indefinitely without trial more than they would support the accused terrorists getting trials. (At 20:00 of the video.)
Who supports Scheuer's peculiar views? One indication is who publishes his work on their websites. Scheuer's next call came from a supporter identified as Tim from Crawford, Virgina. Tim has published Scheuer's writings on his several anti-Semitic websites, at least one of which is largely devoted to promoting disinformation blaming Jews for carrying out 9/11.
Tim from Crawford: Mr. Scheuer, I met you in Los Angeles and you were so brave being on the Bill Maher Show talking about how we're fighting these wars for Israel and I told you about my neoconzionistthreat.com website and america-hijacked.com. You were absolutely spot on, sir. When are we going to shred the Israeli yoke and get on with defending America like George Washington wanted us to?
Scheuer didn't really address those rhetorical questions in his response, so that is something we must look forward to in a later interview. But the question does give some insight into his base of support.
From a psychological perspective, it's instructive to take a look at how Scheuer's paranoid view of Israeli influence has created situations which seem to him to confirm that paranoia. He charges that AIPAC (which he pronounces "eye-pack") and other unnamed Zionists got him fired from his position as a Senior Fellow and columnist for the Jamestown Foundation, an anti-terrorism think-tank, based on a single comment he made. He says (at 39:20 in the video) that he
"said sort of flippantly at one of their conferences that Obama was doing the 'Tel-Aviv Two Step' during the presidential campaign -- getting closer to the Israel Lobby. And that was enough to have the donors to that foundation indicate that I should be terminated...
"You know you always talk about the Israel Lobby and its power, and to see it up close and personal aimed right at me, was very educational. In fact, it was worth the experience of losing a job."
Scheuer believes that his extreme views, no matter how much they diverge from those of the Jamestown Foundation, should be promoted by that group; and if the Jamestown Foundation chooses not to do so, it must be the result of a Zionist conspiracy. I don't have any inside information concerning why the leadership of the Jamestown Foundation fired Scheuer, but the idea that it was the single comment he cites as the reason strains credulity. Scheuer has a record of extreme -- even paranoid -- opinions on this subject of Israel -- a record which is getting longer by the day. His explanation of his firing is perfectly consistent with that paranoid worldview.
That firing might have been motivated by Scheuer's bizarre statement that "the U.S. government was marching to the drummer of al Qaeda" (at 0:50 0f the below-embedded video). He doesn't explain how the U.S. can be controlled by both the Israel Lobby and al Qaeda.
Getting back to his C-SPAN interview, Scheuer wrapped it up by talking himself through the following logical wormhole:
Scheuer: Would I have opposed Truman's decision to recognize Israel? I certainly would have! Because it (was) obvious where it was going to lead.
That being said, let me say that no country has a right to exist. The United States doesn't have a right to exist. Britain doesn't have a right to exist. Bolivia doesn't have a right to exist! Countries exist if they can get along with their neighbors, if they have a thriving economy and a social system which is equitable. If countries have a right to exist, we would be resurrecting the Soviet Union, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, and every other country that has gone down the tubes. Every contry has a right to defend itself, including Israel, but no country has a right to exist.
Elsewhere in this interview, Scheuer argues that whether or not a foreign nation is democratic is of no importance to the United States. He argues that the only factor meriting consideration in determining United States foreign policy is a narrowly defined view of what is in the our immediate national interest. To him, a dictatorship is as good as a democracy, so long as we come out ahead. What he doesn't understand is that the world he advocates is not one in which the United States in particular and democracy in general would be welcome. Maybe that is why the Jamestown Foundation fired him.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
The madness of Michael Scheuer
Michael Scheuer, who headed the CIA's so-called "bin Laden unit" during the Clinton presidency and in that role helped develop and put into practice "extraordinary rendition", has taken a trajectory toward increasingly radical and, frankly, batty thinking in recent years. That may explain his attraction to the equally batty Ron Paul, for whose 2008 presidential campaign Scheuer served as chief foreign policy adviser and legitimacy fig leaf. Scheuer's ideas on foreign policy now sometimes encompass contradictory extremes concerning the United States' role in the world -- a sort of cognitive dissonance tolerable only to an ideologue with an inflated opinion of his own abilities. Thus Scheuer the advocate for American exceptionalism and extraordinary rendition is also Scheuer the critic of American intervention who blames the United States for creating terrorism. His latest piece, published on Antiwar.com, is a case in point. It's title alone speaks volumes about Scheuer's confusion: Barack Obama, Interventionist and Ultimate Jihadi Hero. Here's a quote:
Bad writing doesn't always reflect bad ideas, but in this case that connection is clear. Let's take the errors in that excerpt in order:
1) President Obama's reaction to the attempted airline bombing in Detroit has not been to avoid dealing with it, as Scheuer and others on the right (such as Dick Cheney) contend. The president has ordered immediate reviews of the errors which allowed the bomber to get a visa and board a plane with a bomb before issuing an official, in-depth response. That decision to get as much information about the issue as quickly as possible before he acts seems a wise one for any leader in such a situation, regardless of their ideological orientation. (The previous administration had no need for such a deliberative process considering that they predetermined their course of action before a review of facts. Their only consideration was how to sell that decision to the public in light of those facts.) When President Obama does issue a comprehensive official statement on the attack, such pointless criticisms as those made by Scheuer, Cheney, etc. will disappear to be replaced, no doubt, by other criticisms similarly motivated mostly by a desire to sling mud. Such criticisms really say nothing about the president's policies or his decision-making processes, but say a great deal about the partisan motivation of the critics.
2) Criticizing the horrendous human rights abuses committed by the Iranian regime hardly constitutes "rhetorically interven(ing) in Iran’s internal affairs" as Scheuer puts it. Those words, which could have come directly from the mouth of a spokesman for Ahmadinejad, set a ridiculous standard of what constitutes intervention. Scheuer's isolationism, in this instance, excludes any response whatsoever to the outrages committed by Iran's leaders against those unfortunate enough to live under their rule. That simply takes isolationism, or as he would term it "non-interventionism", to an absurd extreme.
3) Scheuer argues against the idea of universal rights, calling the very concept "the pipedream of Western secular intellectuals and interventionists". Setting aside the evident anti-intellectualism of the comment (and its inexplicable use of the word "secular"), Scheuer's idea that the concept of inalienable human rights -- the sort advocated by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison -- is somehow the product of elitist war-mongers is simply astounding. Scheuer, like Ron Paul, argues that he is motivated by a desire to restore the U.S. to a state envisioned by its founders, yet is painfully ignorant of American history. He absurdly links the Jeffersonian ideas embodied in the Declaration of Independence to "Hitler, Stalin, the Khmer Rouge, and other mass-murdering regimes", tenuously arguing that the French Revolution believed in those same ideas and (he says) that revolution went on inspire Hitler, Stalin, et al. As if that French connection weren't tenuous enough, Scheuer finds a way to throw the idea of universal health care into this logical morass, saying it's all a part of a plan by elites to control the lives of the masses. (Scheuer previously demonstrated a weak grasp of U.S. history by attributing the "America First" slogan of World War II isolationists to the founding fathers. Read here.)
4) Speaking of elites, Scheuer has no trouble identifying the "elite group" he claims to be behind the president's criticism of the Iranian regime's brutality: it's the Zionists. The president's condemnation of Iranian abuses, he says, is just part of a conspiracy to vanquish a foe of Israel which is being carried out by cash-wielding agents of AIPAC. Scheuer's anti-Israel paranoia is nothing new. In the past, he accused those who wanted to build the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum of putting Israel's interests before those of the United States. (Read here.) He also accused Americans who serve in the IDF of disloyalty, singling out for criticism Rahm Emanuel who actually served Israel in a civilian capacity. (Read here.) Scheuer likes to accuse Jews of being traitors.
The absurdity and bigotry of these paranoid views is evident. What remains unclear to me is how this man still maintains a good enough reputation as an expert on foreign affairs to qualify him to be interviewed on topics such as Afghanistan, about which he was interviewed recently by BBC World Service. How on earth can anyone read his ravings and continue to maintain that he is an expert on anything? It is bad enough when paranoid views are promoted on Fox News by a self-described "rodeo clown" such as Glenn Beck. Scheuer may be a clown, but he doesn't describe himself as one. Neither does the BBC. Maybe they should.
Judging by that BBC interview, Scheuer seems to have broken his habit of compulsively addressing his interviewers as "sir" or "ma'am" at least once per answer. That odd mannerism of excessive politeness just sounded a little quirky. However, he has already shown himself in many interviews and columns to be a proponent of paranoid views concerning Jews, dangerously ignorant about history, and biased beyond reason against President Obama. Now that he has added this column defending the right of the Iranian regime to oppress its people, condemning those who criticize that horror, and summarily dismissing the Jeffersonian ideals upon which this country is based as being of a piece with Nazism and Stalinism, maybe its time for news organizations and presidential candidates to stop giving Scheuer a forum.
Then there is Iran. Listening to Obama as he spoke gave the impression that he was eager to get the Detroit-attack stuff out of the way so he could rhetorically intervene in Iran’s internal affairs. Joining with our allies — read other Western interventionists and pawns of Israel — Obama said he wanted to condemn the Tehran regime’s at-times-lethal crackdown on opposition demonstrators. He said that Ahmadinejad and the ruling clerics were trampling on the "universal rights" of Iranians, and that such actions must stop. There are, of course, no universal political rights; this idea is the pipedream of Western secular intellectuals and interventionists, and is part and parcel of the interventionist nonsense Obama included in his Nobel speech about the "perfectibility" of the human condition through the efforts of "enlightened" men and women.
Obama’s mind is emerging as a mind filled with war-causing secular theology of the French Revolution. That revolution was all about enlightened leaders "perfecting" the common man for what the revolutionary elite deemed to be his own good, and using the vehicles of government edict, fanatic secularism, and force to do so. (Sounds a bit like the universal health-care plan, doesn’t it?) The French Revolution went on to father Hitler, Stalin, the Khmer Rouge, and other mass-murdering regimes. In the American context, the revolution’s impact has been the slow but increasingly complete replacement of the Founders’ sturdy non-interventionism — which recognized the pivotal and necessary role religion plays in all polities — by our current bipartisan elite’s obsession with interfering in other peoples’ internal affairs, especially if those internal affairs are interwoven with religion. For Obama and most members of our governing elite, today’s Iran fairly screams for Western intervention to break the mullahs’ backs and install secularism; to destroy an Israeli foe and ensure AIPAC funds to continue to flow into their pockets; and to make them feel good about themselves, no matter the cost to Americans and their children.
Bad writing doesn't always reflect bad ideas, but in this case that connection is clear. Let's take the errors in that excerpt in order:
1) President Obama's reaction to the attempted airline bombing in Detroit has not been to avoid dealing with it, as Scheuer and others on the right (such as Dick Cheney) contend. The president has ordered immediate reviews of the errors which allowed the bomber to get a visa and board a plane with a bomb before issuing an official, in-depth response. That decision to get as much information about the issue as quickly as possible before he acts seems a wise one for any leader in such a situation, regardless of their ideological orientation. (The previous administration had no need for such a deliberative process considering that they predetermined their course of action before a review of facts. Their only consideration was how to sell that decision to the public in light of those facts.) When President Obama does issue a comprehensive official statement on the attack, such pointless criticisms as those made by Scheuer, Cheney, etc. will disappear to be replaced, no doubt, by other criticisms similarly motivated mostly by a desire to sling mud. Such criticisms really say nothing about the president's policies or his decision-making processes, but say a great deal about the partisan motivation of the critics.
2) Criticizing the horrendous human rights abuses committed by the Iranian regime hardly constitutes "rhetorically interven(ing) in Iran’s internal affairs" as Scheuer puts it. Those words, which could have come directly from the mouth of a spokesman for Ahmadinejad, set a ridiculous standard of what constitutes intervention. Scheuer's isolationism, in this instance, excludes any response whatsoever to the outrages committed by Iran's leaders against those unfortunate enough to live under their rule. That simply takes isolationism, or as he would term it "non-interventionism", to an absurd extreme.
3) Scheuer argues against the idea of universal rights, calling the very concept "the pipedream of Western secular intellectuals and interventionists". Setting aside the evident anti-intellectualism of the comment (and its inexplicable use of the word "secular"), Scheuer's idea that the concept of inalienable human rights -- the sort advocated by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison -- is somehow the product of elitist war-mongers is simply astounding. Scheuer, like Ron Paul, argues that he is motivated by a desire to restore the U.S. to a state envisioned by its founders, yet is painfully ignorant of American history. He absurdly links the Jeffersonian ideas embodied in the Declaration of Independence to "Hitler, Stalin, the Khmer Rouge, and other mass-murdering regimes", tenuously arguing that the French Revolution believed in those same ideas and (he says) that revolution went on inspire Hitler, Stalin, et al. As if that French connection weren't tenuous enough, Scheuer finds a way to throw the idea of universal health care into this logical morass, saying it's all a part of a plan by elites to control the lives of the masses. (Scheuer previously demonstrated a weak grasp of U.S. history by attributing the "America First" slogan of World War II isolationists to the founding fathers. Read here.)
4) Speaking of elites, Scheuer has no trouble identifying the "elite group" he claims to be behind the president's criticism of the Iranian regime's brutality: it's the Zionists. The president's condemnation of Iranian abuses, he says, is just part of a conspiracy to vanquish a foe of Israel which is being carried out by cash-wielding agents of AIPAC. Scheuer's anti-Israel paranoia is nothing new. In the past, he accused those who wanted to build the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum of putting Israel's interests before those of the United States. (Read here.) He also accused Americans who serve in the IDF of disloyalty, singling out for criticism Rahm Emanuel who actually served Israel in a civilian capacity. (Read here.) Scheuer likes to accuse Jews of being traitors.
The absurdity and bigotry of these paranoid views is evident. What remains unclear to me is how this man still maintains a good enough reputation as an expert on foreign affairs to qualify him to be interviewed on topics such as Afghanistan, about which he was interviewed recently by BBC World Service. How on earth can anyone read his ravings and continue to maintain that he is an expert on anything? It is bad enough when paranoid views are promoted on Fox News by a self-described "rodeo clown" such as Glenn Beck. Scheuer may be a clown, but he doesn't describe himself as one. Neither does the BBC. Maybe they should.
Judging by that BBC interview, Scheuer seems to have broken his habit of compulsively addressing his interviewers as "sir" or "ma'am" at least once per answer. That odd mannerism of excessive politeness just sounded a little quirky. However, he has already shown himself in many interviews and columns to be a proponent of paranoid views concerning Jews, dangerously ignorant about history, and biased beyond reason against President Obama. Now that he has added this column defending the right of the Iranian regime to oppress its people, condemning those who criticize that horror, and summarily dismissing the Jeffersonian ideals upon which this country is based as being of a piece with Nazism and Stalinism, maybe its time for news organizations and presidential candidates to stop giving Scheuer a forum.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Michael Scheuer: Obama detests the moral obligation to protect the U.S.; Israel supporters should resign from Congress
Michael Scheuer, in a commentary dealing with the war in Afghanistan, has declared that President Obama "detests" his "moral obligation . . . to protect the United States and the American people". He writes in a forum entitled "Obama's Afghan Dilemma: Go Big Or Go Home?" in the current internet edition of the National Journal:
Scheuer concludes his commentary by attributing the rallying cry of World War II era isolationists, "America first", to the founding fathers.
Scheuer, who served as the head of the CIA office assigned to monitor Osama bin Laden in the decade preceding 9/11, has moved toward the far-right, advocating an increasingly isolationist position. During the 2008 presidential campaign, he served as an adviser to Ron Paul in his run for the Republican nomination.
Scheuer's commentary has been reposted by far-right forums, including the Ron Paul forum (read here) and the Concealed Carry Forum (read here). The Ron Paul Forum administrator who posted it indicates in her post that Scheuer submitted it to that forum via email (read here).
"Quite simply, there is no moral dimension to our Afghan War other than to protect the United States and the American people. That moral obligation was ignored by Bush and is detested by Obama, being Harvard educated and the good student of Rev. Wright, Saul Alinsky, and Bill Ayers."Scheuer's commentary, which is premised on the idea that U.S. troops should not be fighting to establish democracy in Afghanistan, goes on to oppose the use of American military force and diplomacy for anything other than defense. He also advocates that members of Congress who support Israel should resign and join the Israeli military.
"No U.S. soldier or Marine should ever be called on to be maimed or killed to make sure Mrs. Muhammad can vote or little Ibrahim can go to a secular school; they should be called on to make such sacrifices only in an effort to decisively defeat America's enemies on the battlefield or to defend its borders. In other words, if Mrs. Clinton wants to install women's rights in Afghanistan; and if Senator McCain wants to become involved in the civil war in Darfur; and if most members of the Congress want to do everything possible to defend Israel, let them all resign their official positions and go and take up their "sacred" causes as private citizens following their personal beliefs. They would all be likely to get their butts shot off, and America would be no poorer for their loss. Indeed, all Americans would be better off because we would stop intervening in other peoples' wars and we would preserve the lives of our soldier-children for the few occasions where the application of overwhelming military power is necessary to defend America."
Scheuer concludes his commentary by attributing the rallying cry of World War II era isolationists, "America first", to the founding fathers.
"Our moral obligation in Afghanistan is framed solely by the requirement laid down by the Founders: America first."
Scheuer, who served as the head of the CIA office assigned to monitor Osama bin Laden in the decade preceding 9/11, has moved toward the far-right, advocating an increasingly isolationist position. During the 2008 presidential campaign, he served as an adviser to Ron Paul in his run for the Republican nomination.
Scheuer's commentary has been reposted by far-right forums, including the Ron Paul forum (read here) and the Concealed Carry Forum (read here). The Ron Paul Forum administrator who posted it indicates in her post that Scheuer submitted it to that forum via email (read here).
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Michael Scheuer to bin Laden: Please nuke us
Ron Paul's chief foreign affairs advisor, Michael Scheuer, has come up with a novel solution for what he percieves as America's weakness under President Obama. On last night's Glenn Beck show on Fox News, he said that he wants Osama bin Laden to nuke us.
from David Neiwert at Crooks and Liars: Michael Scheuer on Fox: America's only hope is for another terrorist attack (VIDEO AVAILABLE AT THE LINK)
Good God. They really are wishing and hoping for a terrorist attack.Michael Scheuer, on Glenn Beck's show last night:
Scheuer: The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.Because it's going to take a grass-roots, bottom-up pressure. Because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. It's an absurd situation again. Only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.
Beck: Which is why, I was thinking this weekend, if I were him, that would be the last thing I would do right now.
I guess the wingnuts have given up the pretense of decency and normalcy. Now they're rooting for another terrorist attack, so that we stoopid Americans will finally WAKE UP! to the nature of the evil that conspires against us ...
Actually, we're becoming quite awake indeed. And it isn't bin Laden who scares us right now. More like Glenn Beck and his guests.
Read more about Scheuer here.
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