Ex CIA-We Are NOT Safer & They Hate Us For Our Actions Not Our Freedoms

[kpete]

Six Questions for Michael Scheuer on National Security
Posted on Wednesday, August 23, 2006. By Ken Silverstein.

Michael Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004; he served as the chief of the bin Laden unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is the formerly anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror and Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America.

1. We're coming up on the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Is the country safer or more vulnerable to terrorism?

................

In the long run, we're not safer because we're still operating on the assumption that we're hated because of our freedoms, when in fact we're hated because of our actions in the Islamic world. There's our military presence in Islamic countries, the perception that we control the Muslim world’s oil production, our support for Israel and for countries that oppress Muslims such as China, Russia, and India, and our own support for Arab tyrannies. The deal we made with Qadaffi in Libya looks like hypocrisy: we'll make peace with a brutal dictator if it gets us oil. President Bush is right when he says all people aspire to freedom but he doesn't recognize that people have different definitions of democracy. Publicly promoting democracy while supporting tyranny may be the most damaging thing we do. From the standpoint of democracy, Saudi Arabia looks much worse than Iran. We use the term “Islamofascism”—but we're supporting it in Saudi Arabia, with Mubarak in Egypt, and even Jordan is a police state. We don't have a strategy because we don't have a clue about what motivates our enemies.

4. Has the war in Iraq helped or hurt in the fight against terrorism?

It broke the back of our counterterrorism program. Iraq was the perfect execution of a war that demanded jihad to oppose it. You had an infidel power invading and occupying a Muslim country and it was perceived to be unprovoked. Many senior Western officials said that bin Laden was not a scholar and couldn't declare a jihad but other Muslim clerics did. So that religious question was erased.


more at:
http://harpers.org/sb-seven-michael-scheuer-1156277744.html

[RedEarth]

1. As usual, a good post.........thanks!

[speedoo]

2. Bless you, kpete..

for your constant attention to displaying the truth.

K&R

[Captain Hilts]

3. Excellent article. nt

[converted_democrat]

4. K&R- Great piece.. Thank you for posting this.. n/t

[knowbody0]

5. Ahhhh, the truth!

I love truth in the morning. Thanks kpete.

[Sinti]

6. Something all of us should understand. Great post. n/t

[Lone_Star_Dem]

7. We've paved the way for terrorist of the future

In effect removing barriers and boosting the number of supporters they have in ways they never could have without our help.

This administration is Americas own worst enemy.

[Martin Eden]

8. Are there any Dem presidential contenders saying this?

That they hate us for our POLICIES, not for our FREEDOMS?

[Poiuyt]

9. I'm guessing that no prez candidates have the courage to say this

It runs counter to everything that has been drummed into our heads by Bush and the RW media. But I'd sure like to see this guy make the talk show circuits

[Greyhound]

10. No, and I would probably stroke-out if they ever did.

Don't forget that the crimes of The United States of America have been perpetrated over the course of over a century, by members of both parties, with the (mostly) silent acquiescence of the sheeple.

[leesa]

12. Not a single one of them has said this and it desperately needs to be said

[lfairban]

16. There is a reason . . .

. . . why it was a cartoon character who said, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

You can't vote against a cartoon character.

[magellan]

11. It's so good to see the truth being reported now and then

Thanks, kpete! K&R.

[Straight Shooter]

13. "They hate us for our freedoms" was the stupidest thing bush ever said.

Yes, I know someone wrote it for him, but he willingly parroted it. It's just another one of those nonsensical slogans for the non-critical-thinking bushbots.

I always thought of it as they don't hate us for our freedoms, they hate us for our arrogance. (They hate our government for its arrogance, that is.)

[KittyWampus]

14. Bush and the GOP have created more terrorists.

[bananarepublican]

15. Is there a method to the Bush Administration's madness? Enemies first...

... need to be created before they can be fought! Then the question becomes... who benefits from the subsequent war? Always follow the money!

[Joe Chi Minh]

17. 'How Bush and Blair's war on terror has boosted Iran's hardline

stance' is the headline of an article by Chief Reporter, David Williams, in today's UK Daily Mail.

'The country is now the main player in the Middle East, according to a respected British think tank'.

'There is little doubt that Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the war on terror in the Middle East', says a report by the Royal Institute of International Studies in London, also known as Chatham House.

It points out that Iran's regional rivals - Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan - have both been eliminated by the US and its allies and neither have been replaced by coherent and stable political structures.'

Well, well.

[LeahMira]

18. Which freedoms would these be?

President Bush is right when he says all people aspire to freedom but he doesn't recognize that people have different definitions of democracy.

I think they have different definitions of freedom also.