Former bin Laden Unit Chief Speaks

Michael Scheuer, formerly chief of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, tells Americans, “Relentless intervention and open borders have, respectively, earned America war with an increasing portion of the Muslim world and allowed our Islamist enemies into the United States undetected.

Dr. Scheuer advises: (1) The United States should withdraw all of its personnel and moveable physical assets from what Obama called the Yemen success, and (2) Washington should build on a successful de-intervention in Yemen by beginning the same process in the Syria-Iraq theatre.

From Scheuer’s website www.non-intervention.com:

The overthrow of the Yemeni government sets the stage for a Sunni-vs-Shia conflagration on the Arab Peninsula. The late Yemeni regime is a zero loss to the United States. What President Obama once described as a vital regional ally – media pundits are now echoing this lie – was nothing more than a Arab strong man and his gang who ruled the Yemeni capital of Sana and almost nothing else, men who generously agreed to take hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military equipment, cash, training, and who knows what else. In return, the Yemeni regime allowed what it could not stop in any event: U.S. drone and Special Forces’ attacks that violated Yemeni sovereignty. Silence was the Yemeni regime’s main contribution as Obama’s vital regional ally, and now with that government gone, and none ready to take its place, the attacks can continue because there is no sovereign government to object to them.

What good such attacks would do is another matter. They have killed some important Yemen-based Islamist leaders and may have destroyed some arms caches, but the fact is that Al-Qaeda-on-the-Arab-Peninsula (AQAP) is stronger than ever before. The U.S. attacks in Yemen – as well as those in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, and elsewhere – amount to nothing more than make-Americans-feel-good tactical victories that, as always, leave the strategic advantage and momentum with the Islamists.

Today’s reality in Yemen again demonstrates the extraordinary fecklessness of the U.S. government, both U.S. political parties, U.S. and NATO generals, and their EU sidekicks. Expensive support from all of them brought no stability to Yemen; U.S. and NATO-country military training did not create a force that could defend the regime; and Special Forces’ and CIA pin-prick attacks and drone strikes did nothing to slow the enemies’ growth. In addition, two Islamist insurgent organizations – the Houthis and AQAP — have grown larger, stronger, and better armed since the United States and Europe started supporting and publicly praising the Yemeni regime, while simultaneously lying to Americans and Europeans about how our now-deceased key regional ally was beginning to pull its own weight and was a shining example of the success of U.S. and Western policy.

There is, however, one bright spot in this otherwise dismal story. The arrival of the Shia Houthi insurgents as a potent rival of the Sunni AQAP gives the United States another — even if unmerited — chance to step back and watch the marvelously positive impact a regional Shia-Sunni sectarian war would have on U.S. national security. Such a war would hurt the U.S. economy a bit because Obama, Cuomo, and their deeply anti-American party have blocked U.S. energy self-sufficiency, but otherwise there is nothing but upside for the United States.