4-07-08, 9:51 am

Original source: Morning Star


Marching Towards Hell: America and Islam after Iraq by Michael Scheuer Simon & Schuster

Unsurprisingly, author Michael Scheuer, a senior CIA veteran responsible for drafting the notorious US rendition program, frequently quotes Machiavelli in his devastating predictions of the chaotic road to US suicide.

Indeed, with his belief that 'humans are hardwired for war' and his denunciation of US policies of conducting war in a 'civilized manner,' consequently 'paralyzing brute strength,' Genghis Khan could equally have featured.

Nevertheless, Scheuer's scalding attacks on the US establishment, Republican, Democrat, neocon and all, pursuing what he claims are defunct cold-war policies in its futile attempts to combat its Islamic transcontinental enemy and his demonstration that defeat in both Iraq and Afghanistan is already a virtual fact make this book a stimulating, if frightening, read.

There are, however, amusing asides.

His only modern heroes are Reagan - the victor in the struggle with the 'nuclear gangster Gorbachov' - and Thatcher and he claims that US medical care for the Guantanamo Bay inmates will result only in the creation of virulent anti-US mojahedin recruits with 'the best-cared for teeth in the Islamic world.'

Yet, along with such hilarious inanities, Scheuer's insights would make salutary reading for populations which have been sold the myth that Islamist antagonism to the West is based not on the worldwide oppression of Muslims but on hatred of Western culture.

He dismisses the increasingly voiced excuse, as defeat in Iraq looms, that the imperialist's mistake was not to prepare post-invasion policies and believes that the US chickened out of using its available power to 'utterly destroy its Islamic foe' in order to placate its European 'godless, bureaucratic and quasi-socialist' allies.

Scheuer will find few compatriot friends in asserting that Washington's relationship with Israel is 'not only a burden, but a cancer' on its 'ability to protect its genuine national interests.'

Blood pressures will rise further at his claim that Osama bin Laden is a political and military genius who has brought about an Islamic Renaissance internationalizing the Sunni movement freed both from the more quiescent priesthood and pro-Western repressive Arab regimes. If only the many chances that the CIA has had to kill bin Laden had not been frustrated by US weakling administrations afraid of collateral damage.

There is a truly sinister side to Scheuer's demand for his government to seize the chance ruthlessly to destroy its Islamist enemy before it is too late.

'America today would be a far more credible military power and a far safer place if, instead of endless, puerile bickering over what sort of monument should be built at the sight of the World Trade Centre, we had firebombed Kabul and Kandahar, demolished whatever ruins were left and sown salt over the length and width of both sites.'

We should all be warned, as these are not the ravings of a madman but the influential views of a major US analyst of global terrorism and a university professor, that we may indeed be 'marching towards hell.'

From Morning Star