Christ, What An Asshole: If I Could Figure Out What You Were Getting At, Maybe Then... Edition
Published by BG on Saturday, September 08, 2007 at 12:20 PM.Right-wing blogs can be confusing. Take this post, reprinted in its entirety, from today's offerings at Power Line (Scott Johnson, author - links as he has them):
Power Line: Osama bin Scheuer
The part that bugs me is the ad hominem connection of Osama bin Laden, Michael Scheuer and Bill Clinton. The salient details that underly this post seem to be:
1) Scheuer was in charge of CIA's bin Laden unit while Clinton was in office
2) He remained as an advisor to that same unit under Bush
3) On his way out the door, he "anonymously" wrote a book called Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror
4) Osama bin Laden singled out this book in his latest tape as something he feels expresses the current state of US/Islamic affairs
Imperial Hubris' thesis sits on two ideas. One, that the 9/11 Commission didn't address the fundamental flaws and negligence demonstrated by the intelligence community's attention to OBL in pre-9/11 days - and two, that it is our foreign policy and not "our freedoms" that causes al-Qaeda's rage.
After reading the two articles linked in the Power Line post, it's obvious that some combination of Scheuer's lack of vision in his CIA role and the bureaucratic nightmare that is the administration's (I'm not letting Bush off the hook for this one, because this implicates every president sitting in the Oval since the first time al-Qaeda manifested an attack on Americans or Europeans at home or abroad) handling of setting intelligence priorities is what gets these righty bloggers bent out of shape. Okay, point taken. Our intelligence capabilities for assessing the al-Qaeda threat then (and hell, probably now) were abysmal and likely cost us thousands of American lives on 9/11.
I get that. Scheuer is no hero. He's quite possibly a guy on whose shoulders some non-insignificant piece of blame for our failures six years ago should come to rest. That's a legitimate beef. Less legitimate, but still not unexpected from Weekly Standard contributors is the denial of Scheuer's thesis that it was our foreign policy and not our "freedoms" that gets these guys tweaked.
Here's the part I don't get: what is "Osama bin Scheuer" supposed to mean? That Scheuer, and by association Bill Clinton, were actively working with OBL to destroy America? That perhaps the failures of Scheuer, and by association Bill Clinton, are equally as vile and criminal as OBL's conspiratorial undertakings? That Scheuer, and by association Bill Clinton, are complicit in pushing the al-Qaeda propaganda that weighs our imperialism over our Indigo Girls as a factor for the fomentation of terrorism?
Seriously, help me out here. This makes no sense to me. bin Laden's 1998 fatwa stated that our sin against Islam is "occupying the lands... in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula," and nearly ten years later he reinforces that notion by pointing specifically to an American's analysis that happens to agree (which, by the way, is no sin, nor is it unpatriotic) with his original statements as a primer all Americans should read to understand why al-Qaeda really hates us.
So why, then, is OBL's identification of an American author's ability to correctly analyze the situation a sin worthy of an ad hominem attack on his credibility?
Scheuer got it wrong then, and that's a tragedy. That he thoroughly understands and coherently expresses what is, by direct account of one of the principals involved, a factually correct analysis of the situation should be laudable. Why tar and feather the guy for this? Hit him for his past sins, sure, but what's it with trying to slap the guy around when he gets one right?
Christ, what an asshole.
Power Line: Osama bin Scheuer
Michael Scheuer is the former CIA analyst who headed the CIA's bin Laden desk (Alec Station) during the Clinton administration and then worked as an advisor to the CIA's bin Laden unit until his retirement from the agency after the 2004 election. Yesterday bin Laden recommended Scheuer's book to those who want to understand why the United States is "losing the war" against al Qaeda. (Bin Laden didn't name the book, but he was certainly referring to Imperial Hubris.) In the article "The CIA examines itself," Gabriel Schoenfeld fills in some background and tries to figure what the recenly released OIG report on the CIA's performance reveals about Scheuer. I noted Scheuer's role in the bureaucratic war against the Bush administration in "Three years of the Condor."
The part that bugs me is the ad hominem connection of Osama bin Laden, Michael Scheuer and Bill Clinton. The salient details that underly this post seem to be:
1) Scheuer was in charge of CIA's bin Laden unit while Clinton was in office
2) He remained as an advisor to that same unit under Bush
3) On his way out the door, he "anonymously" wrote a book called Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror
4) Osama bin Laden singled out this book in his latest tape as something he feels expresses the current state of US/Islamic affairs
Imperial Hubris' thesis sits on two ideas. One, that the 9/11 Commission didn't address the fundamental flaws and negligence demonstrated by the intelligence community's attention to OBL in pre-9/11 days - and two, that it is our foreign policy and not "our freedoms" that causes al-Qaeda's rage.
After reading the two articles linked in the Power Line post, it's obvious that some combination of Scheuer's lack of vision in his CIA role and the bureaucratic nightmare that is the administration's (I'm not letting Bush off the hook for this one, because this implicates every president sitting in the Oval since the first time al-Qaeda manifested an attack on Americans or Europeans at home or abroad) handling of setting intelligence priorities is what gets these righty bloggers bent out of shape. Okay, point taken. Our intelligence capabilities for assessing the al-Qaeda threat then (and hell, probably now) were abysmal and likely cost us thousands of American lives on 9/11.
I get that. Scheuer is no hero. He's quite possibly a guy on whose shoulders some non-insignificant piece of blame for our failures six years ago should come to rest. That's a legitimate beef. Less legitimate, but still not unexpected from Weekly Standard contributors is the denial of Scheuer's thesis that it was our foreign policy and not our "freedoms" that gets these guys tweaked.
Here's the part I don't get: what is "Osama bin Scheuer" supposed to mean? That Scheuer, and by association Bill Clinton, were actively working with OBL to destroy America? That perhaps the failures of Scheuer, and by association Bill Clinton, are equally as vile and criminal as OBL's conspiratorial undertakings? That Scheuer, and by association Bill Clinton, are complicit in pushing the al-Qaeda propaganda that weighs our imperialism over our Indigo Girls as a factor for the fomentation of terrorism?
Seriously, help me out here. This makes no sense to me. bin Laden's 1998 fatwa stated that our sin against Islam is "occupying the lands... in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula," and nearly ten years later he reinforces that notion by pointing specifically to an American's analysis that happens to agree (which, by the way, is no sin, nor is it unpatriotic) with his original statements as a primer all Americans should read to understand why al-Qaeda really hates us.
So why, then, is OBL's identification of an American author's ability to correctly analyze the situation a sin worthy of an ad hominem attack on his credibility?
Scheuer got it wrong then, and that's a tragedy. That he thoroughly understands and coherently expresses what is, by direct account of one of the principals involved, a factually correct analysis of the situation should be laudable. Why tar and feather the guy for this? Hit him for his past sins, sure, but what's it with trying to slap the guy around when he gets one right?
Christ, what an asshole.
Powered by ScribeFire.
