Inside the Mad Mind of Michael Scheuer, Token Expert of Appeasers, Isolationists, Anti-Semites, and America-Haters
Pages: 1 2 |
|
 Print This Post
|
First, the “Israeli military veteran” Scheuer refers to is Rahm Emanuel, and he’s not an Israeli military vet:
In 1991, during the first Gulf War, Emanuel flew to Israel and volunteered in Sar-El, the Israel Defense Forces program for civilian volunteers, at a base in the north, performing the unglamorous task of rust-proofing brakes on military vehicles.
Just a bit different, no? And for what it’s worth, a fair number of Israelis don’t seem to think Emanuel’s on their side anymore…
Second, ol’ Rahm could be the biggest Zionist zealot in the country, and it still wouldn’t make Scheuer’s case—Emanuel’s boss ultimately calls the shots, and Obama’s far removed from “Israeli operative” you can’t help but wonder what Scheuer’s smoking. What’s Israel getting from someone they “completely own”? Not bloody much, that’s what. Among the reasons the International Zionist Conspiracy should demand a refund:
- Obama siding with the United Nations in pressuring Israel to give up its nukes while ignoring Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and blaming Israel for defending themselves in this summer’s flotilla skirmish
- The White House coming out against Israel’s humane, defensive blockade of Gaza
- The President of the United States snubbing visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, giving him a series of demands, then abandoning him for dinner
- The US threatening to abstain from voting to support Israel’s national integrity in the UN if they don’t agree to a 90-day settlement freeze
Are there words sufficient to fully convey just how utterly insane it is to say the man responsible for all this is a lapdog for the Jews?
Writing for the Weekly Standard, Thomas Joscelyn has more on Mad Mike. Scheuer has a history of floating dark conspiracy theories about how Israel conspires to bend US foreign policy to its sinister will, including Scheuer’s view that the US Holocaust Museum is meant to achieve this end by working a guilt trip over unsuspecting Americans and his habit of approvingly citing al Qaeda propaganda about Israel’s ties to the US.
Even when we move away from the subject of Israel, Scheuer doesn’t fare much better. Joscelyn undermines the CIA kook’s main meal ticket, his blowback thesis…
In advancing this argument Scheuer ignores the role that state-controlled propaganda plays in shaping popular opinion in the Middle East. He also ignores the argument that U.S. foreign policy has been, on balance, ostensibly pro-Muslim and pro-Arab.
History is replete with examples, but several will suffice: the U.S. saved Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat from Israeli forces in Beirut in 1982; assisted Muslims against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan throughout the 1980s; freed the Muslim nation of Kuwait and prevented the invasion of Saudi Arabia by a supposedly secular tyrant in 1991; and intervened on behalf of Muslims in Somalia and Bosnia. (For a more complete account of U.S. foreign policy towards Muslims and Arabs, see Barry Rubin’s “The Real Roots of Arab Anti-Americanism” published in the November/December 2002 issue of Foreign Affairs, a magazine published by the Council on Foreign Relations.)
…and his glaringly-inconsistent assessments of Saddam Hussein’s ties to terrorism:
WHEN MICHAEL SCHEUER, the first head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, first emerged into public view almost a year ago, it was a curiosity how he could appear in the media–time after time–claiming that there was no evidence of a relationship between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaeda. It was curious because, in 2002, Scheuer wrote the book Through Our Enemies’ Eyes, in which he cited numerous pieces of evidence showing that there was, in fact, a working relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda. That evidence directly contradicted his criticism of the intelligence that led this nation into the Iraq war, which he called a “Christmas present” for bin Laden.
Here’s 2002 Scheuer: “Regarding Iraq, bin Laden, as noted was in contact with Baghdad’s intelligence service since at least 1994. He reportedly cooperated with it in the area of chemical-biological-radiological-nuclear (CBRN) weapons and may have trained some fighters in Iraq at camps run by Saddam’s anti-Iran force, the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK).”
And here’s his 2005 about-face: “Without a doubt, in the war against al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein was one of our best allies.”
In the final analysis, we see that the authority on which so much anti-war, isolationist, and appeasement-minded agitation depends is nothing more than a fraudulent crank. But while the real Michael Scheuer merely exposes the intellectual carelessness of his fans, it reveals something far more disturbing—and potentially more dangerous—about the competence of the CIA that tasked such a man with a major role in the defense of our nation.
_____
Hailing from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Calvin Freiburger is a political science major at Hillsdale College. He also writes for the Hillsdale Forum and his personal website, Calvin Freiburger Online.
