Michael Scheuer is a twenty-plus-year CIA veteran. From 1996 to 1999, he served as Chief of the bin Laden unit. In Marching Toward Hell, Scheuer writes, “Iraq is another case of the governing elite embarking on a look-how-great-we-are exercise designed to bring secular democracy to Muslims, the blood-and-treasure bill to be paid, as always, by Americans whose leaders care not a whit about protecting them or their children…. Saddam Hussein and Bashir al-Assad were strong, ruthless, and reliable de facto U.S. allies in the war against Sunni Islamist militancy. They were the cork in the bottle’s neck that prevented the easy westward flow of Islamist fighters.”
“Faced with the chance to use this cost-free bulwark, the Bush administration and Congress destroyed it in the name of trying to outdo Woodrow Wilson, a human scourge who is not often enough ranked with the twentieth century’s top bloodletters. Unsatisfied with simply annihilating al-Qaeda, the one foe who could attack the United States, the Bush team embarked on a second, democracy- crusading mission, that showed them to be ignorant not only of the Muslim world but of how long it has taken to develop a functioning, equitable republican society in their own country.”
Read my followup, Marching Toward Hell II by clicking here.
