Michael Scheuer was the chief of the CIAs bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999 and remained a CIA counterterrorism analyst until 2004. His writing is maddeningly unquotable, and his point of view is hidden until the last pages of the book.
He says that in 1996 he was fortunate to join a small company of CIA officers who worked in the US and overseas, who came to hate bin Laden but who also came to respect his piety, integrity and skills. Their mission was to understand bin Laden’s motivation, to capture or kill him, and to destroy al-Qaeda but it was “thwarted… by self seeking cowardice… in the senior levels of the intelligence community” and by the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Even today, the “former CIA officer who stopped plans to capture bin Laden in 1998-1999 is now President Obama’s senior advisor on ‘extremism.'” When Scheuer left the CIA in 2004, he directed his frustration into training young non-commissioned officers and junior officers for the US Marines and the Army on how al-Qaeda and its allies perceive the world. Many of his trainees were veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan or both. He found them to be “decent, smart, tough and funny, though also cynical and angry.” The experienced officers who had already served overseas had learned that they were not fighting “freedom-hating nihilists, as they senior commanders had told them, but hard-fighting, brave and intelligent men” who were defending their homes and who intended to drive the American invaders out of their country and out of the Muslim world. Scheuer ends the book by praising his trainees, saying “all Americans should support and honor these young… lions [who are] led by self-serving moral cowards.” The political leadership of this country has misled us so that “most of the assumptions Americans have about bin Laden — are dead wrong.” Scheuer wrote the book in the hope that we would stop deceiving ourselves.
The first chapter is practically unreadable but the information in the book is so interesting and so well documented that you might find it worth the trouble, although you might be advised to read it back to front. One of the most cogent passages in the book is a quote from Omar, the son of Osama (p. 111):
My father paused before explaining it this way. “Omar, try to imagine a two-wheeled bicycle. One wheel is made of steel. The other is made of wood. Now, my son, if you wanted to destroy the bicycle, would you destroy the wooden or the steel wheel?”
“The wooden wheel of course, ” I replied.
“You are correct my son. Remember this: America and Israel are one bicycle with two wheels. The wooden wheel represents the United States. The steel wheel represents Israel. Omar, Israel is the stronger power of the two. Does a general attack the strongest line when in battle? No, he concentrates on the weakest part of the line. The Americans are weak. It is best to attack the weakest point first. Once we take out the weak wooden wheel, the steel wheel will automatically fail. Who can ride a bicycle with only one wheel?”
He patted my knee with his hand. “First we obliterate America. By that I don’t mean militarily. We can destroy America from within by making it economically weak, until its markets collapse. When that happens, they will have not interest in supplying Israel with arms, for they will not have extra funds to do so. At that time, the steel wheel will corrode and be destroyed by lack of attention.
“That’s what we [Muslims] did to the Russians. We bled blood from their body in Afghanistan. The Russians spent all their wealth on the war in Afghanistan. When they could no longer finance the war, they fled. After fleeing their whole system collapsed. Holy Warriors defending Afghanistan are the ones responsible for bringing a huge nation to its knees. We can do the same thing with America and Israel. We only have to be patient.”
[see OxfordIslamicStudies.com]