Book Review

Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror

By Anonymous
Washington D.C.


For those Americans who have been deluged on a daily basis that the West is winning the war on terror that began after September 11, 2001, the book is a real eye opening account written by "Anonymous," a member of the US intelligence community who spent 17 years as an analyst focusing exclusively on terrorism, Islamic insurgencies, militant Islam, and the affairs of South Asia - Afghanistan and Pakistan (x). However, the identity of "Anonymous" has been revealed as Michael Scheuer, a 22-year CIA veteran who ran the Counterterrorist Center's bin Laden station (code-named 'Alec') from 1996 to 1999 (See Boston Phoenix, June, 2004). The book is a powerful and persuasive analysis of the terrorist threat and the Bush administration's failed efforts to fights it. It is based on the author's personal accounts of and experiences in dealing with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and the dangers they pose and symbolise for the United States of America. The book is a second by 'Anonymous', who has chosen to use the pseudonym despite the revelation of his identity.

The author believes that a fair-mined individual who takes time to read and ponder a representative sample of relevant open-source literature on the subject would draw the same conclusions that form the basis of his thesis for the book. These conclusions include:

*The refusal by US leaders to accept that they are fighting a worldwide Islamic insurgency - not criminality or terrorism.
*The military is now America's only tool and will remain so as long as the current policies are in place.
*Mr. Laden's reasons for waging the war with the West have nothing to do with its freedom, liberty and democracy, but have everything to do with US policies and actions in the Muslim World.
*Bin Laden will not have the level of success if Muslims did not truly believe their faith, brethren, resources and lands to be under attack.
*Persian Gulf oil and lack of serious alternative-energy development are at the core of bin Laden issue.
*That this war has the potential to last beyond our children's lifetimes and to be fought mostly on US soil. (pp. x-xi)

Throughout the book, the author often keeps coming back to the argument that in the context of the ideas that bin Laden share with his Muslim brethrens, the military actions of al-Qaeda and its allies are acts of war, not terrorism, and are meant to advance clear, focused, limited, and widely popular foreign policy goals:

*The end US aid to Israel and the ultimate elimination of that state.
*The removal of US and Western forces from the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Muslim lands.
*End of support for the oppression of Muslims by Russia, China and India.
*End of US protection of repressive Muslim regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, etc.
*Conservation of the Muslim world's energy resources.

Thus, as bin Laden and his ilk defend the things they love, they are loved by most Muslims as symbols of hope in a Muslim world conditioned to massive military defeats, Islamic charlatans who preach austere Islam, and US-protected dictators and tyrants. Efforts by the US to kill bin Laden are, therefore, seen by many Muslims as attempts to kill a heroic and holy man who lives and works only to protect his brethren.

"Anonymous" believes that the way US sees and interprets people and events outside North America is heavily clouded by arrogance and self-centeredness amounting to what he calls "Imperial Hubris." This, he contends, is a way of thinking America's elite have acquired since the end of World War II. "It is a process of interpreting the world so it makes sense to us, a process yielding a world in which few events seem alien because we Americanize their components."(p. 165)

This mode of thinking, according to the author, has spawned a line of analysis by authors like Bernard Lewis, Ralph Peters, Malise Ruthven, and Victor Davis who argue that bin Laden and his allies and their goals have been spawned by a "failed civilization" - one hostile to democratization, capitalism, and modernity, save for the tools of war - and that they are driven by both the realisation that Islamic society is dying, and a maniacal desire to destroy other civilizations that are successful and causing the demise of Islam (p. 110). The author disagrees with this line of thinking in the West. For him, the larger question is whether this is a failure of Islamic civilization, or the result of a transition from the European colonialism to one of "enlightened age colonialism" in which former Muslim colonies have entered the post-colonial era under a system of absolutist monarchies and dictator-run regimes. (p. 111).

Thus, because of the pervasive imperial hubris that dominates the minds of Western, and particularly US political, academic, social, media, and military elites, the US is able and content to believe the Islamic world fails to understand the benign intent of its foreign policy and its implementation. Anonymous writes that the conduct of US military operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan have left both countries seething with anti-US sentiment, turning into fertile grounds for the expansion of al-Qaeda and kindred groups (pp. 74-86). This CIA officer believes the US invasion of Iraq was exactly what bin Laden and his associates had hoped would happen. The Iraq invasion gave a new cause to the jihadists and new evidence to Arab militants that Americans are the "new crusaders" -- foreign infidels bent on conquest. The result has been more recruits, more suicide bombers and more money to jihadists, and it is only a matter of time that the whole Muslim world will become synonymous with the suicide bomber.

Throughout the book, one cannot help but notice a deep respect by the author for bin Laden. As such, his insights deserve attention by analysts in the Western world. His core argument-that we are fighting against a large, Islamist jihad rather than a discrete terrorist organisation-is quite compelling. Quoting the Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu that "all war is based on deception," Anonymous concludes that America's war against bin Laden and Al-Qaeda has deceived only the American public (p. 263).

Anonymous argues that American leadership has made the mistake in the past of thinking about these enemies as criminals. His remedy suggests that having isolated the threat as an Islamic insurgency, the appropriate response is to fight not just with bullets and warrants, but also with ideas -- politically and socially. The author concludes that to make the decisions and allocate the resources needed to ensure US security, Americans must understand the world as it is, not as we want - or worse yet, hope - it will be.

Anonymous states that the US is being defeated not because the evidence of the threat is unavailable, but because we refuse to accept it at face value and without Americanizing the data that comes easily and voluminously to hand. This, he contends, must change or our way of life will be unrecognizably changed (p. 168). This will be difficult, given America's loss of credibility around the globe. In order to succeed in this battle, the US must work with friends in the Islamic world to counter what Anonymous calls the "power of focused, principled hatred". Regrettably, Anonymous does not write much on working with Islamic friends. He tends to lump all Muslims into a single group, bound by their dogmatic hatred of America. In that, he is surely wrong, since there is no unified Muslim Ummah that can claim to speak for the entire Muslim world.

Reference:
Strategic Studies Journel