MICHAEL SCHEUER INTERVIEW - Wednesday July 11th, 2007
GEORGE NEGUS: Michael, it's hard not to describe you having
quit the CIA in 2004 as the spy who came in from the cold and boy, have
you really come in. People could now suggest you've become an apologist
almost for the opponents of the war against terror.
MICHAEL SCHEUER, FORMER CIA OPERATIVE: That's the simple way
to look at
it sir, but I think what's happening is that we in the West are being
beaten by an enemy because we refuse to understand what his motivation
is. And the reluctance of politicians to accept the enemy at his word
is something similar to their failure in the 30s to have read 'Mein
Kampf'
GEORGE NEGUS: Was there anything in particular that caused you
to shift
ground. You could be also described as a bin Laden hunter. You were the
head of the unit that was after bin Laden?
MICHAEL SCHEUER: Absolutely, he's a man that richly deserves
to be
dead.
GEORGE NEGUS: Is he dead by the way?
MICHAEL SCHEUER: He's not dead.
GEORGE NEGUS: He’s definitely not dead?
MICHAEL SCHEUER: I can't guarantee it but if he was dead they
would
have told us, because he would have embraced martyrdom, it was his
goal. He's a man who is extraordinarily talented, has put together an
organisation that's absolutely unique in the Islamic world and if we
don't understand that and if we don't understand what motivates them,
we're going to believe the politicians when they say there's only a few
of them out there, they're fanatics, they're impoverished, they're
illiterate, they're unemployed, what we're facing is a movement that is
calling on the talents of the best and brightness in the Islamic world.
GEORGE NEGUS: Let’s talk about that, because you
describe it
as a movement.. Is it possible these days to describe al-Qa'ida as on
organisation or is it now an ideology where all sorts of independent
operatives if you like, cells, individuals, are doing things, acts of
terrorism because they agree with the al-Qa'ida goal, objective?
MICHAEL SCHEUER: I think it's both. Bin Laden has always been
very
outspoken in saying that he's just one Muslim and al-Qa'ida is a very
limited sized organisation. We can't do it by ourselves. He's always
looked at his role in this Jihad as being the insider and the
instigator of other people to take action off their own hook and what
we're seeing now is not one replacing the other but we're seeing a
second tier of threat, al-Qa'ida itself remains the core al-Qa'ida,
remains a dangerous threat to the United States.
GEORGE NEGUS: But not calling the shots per se..
MICHAEL SCHEUER: Not at all.
GEORGE NEGUS: Providing the inspiration and the motivation.
MICHAEL SCHEUER: They are being, they are inspiring people to
act on
their own without any kind of command and control back to al-Qa'ida in
wherever they are in south Asia, but what it does is it creates a whole
new tier of threat for our law enforcement and intelligence services to
keep track of.
GEORGE NEGUS: Your declarations have been pretty bleak, we in
the West
are fighting an enemy. ‘We are woefully chosen to
misunderstand and to whom we are losing hands down on an every front.
You say to do Afghanistan on the cheap is what we're trying to do and
defeat there was just around the corner.’ That's about as
bleak a declaration I've heard about how badly things are apparently
going?
MICHAEL SCHEUER: I think part of it is because the media
doesn't pay a
lot of attention to Afghanistan and at least our President, both
parties in our country really identified the fall of the cities in
Afghanistan as victory. Well, whoever invades Afghanistan always takes
the city, whether Alexander the Great, the Russians or the British.
What follows is the war. We have 40,000 troops in Afghanistan. It's
bigger than Texas. It has the highest mountains on the earth and we've
given then five Herculean tasks, defeat al-Qa'ida, defeat the Taliban,
keep Karzai's Government in power, create a secular democracy and
eradicate the world's largest heroin distributor.
GEORGE NEGUS: You say we're going to be defeated the West, the
coalition if the willing.
MICHAEL SCHEUER: Absolutely, it's too late in Afghanistan. As
you know,
Sir. Afghans are not the most friendly people towards foreigners and
we're there now into our sixth year almost. Absence, I mean familiarity
certainly breeds contempt in that country.
GEORGE NEGUS: Australia is involved in both of those theatres
of war.
What is your advice, gratuitous or otherwise for this country. The PM
is absolutely determined that in both cases particularly Iraq as he
puts it, we're there until the job is cone done and the rest of us are
a bit unsure about what that means, but you're an expert in the area,
on the whole war on terror, what's your advice?
MICHAEL SCHEUER: My advise is to first realise it's not a war
on
terror, we're fighting insurgent organisations, we are not fighting
terrorists. If we were fighting terrorists we would have won already
because of the damage we inflicted on them. We are fighting a very
durable insurgent who we have not deployed enough fire power against
and we certainly have not used enough fire power against. We also have
a set of goals that are unobtainable. The idea that we're going to
establish a secular democracy in Iraq or Afghanistan is a madness. And
if that's the goal we should leave tomorrow.
GEORGE NEGUS: How do you turn that around, how do you turn
what you say
is an inevitable defeat into a possible victory? Just by ploughing in
more and more troops at a time when people are calling for them to be
pulled out?
MICHAEL SCHEUER: Absolutely, if you don't want to win don't go
to war.
If you go to war use enough force to win and get it over with.
GEORGE NEGUS: Why didn't as you contend, didn't they,
Washington,
Canberra, London, etc, want to win?
MICHAEL SCHEUER: We are as a western, as a set of western
Governments
and especially in the United States we are dreadfully afraid of
international opinion. We have talked ourselves in the latest
generation of students into the belief that wars can be fought with
inflicting very few casualties on the enemy, none on civilians and few
among our own forces. And we're facing in an insurgency one of the
bloodiest kind of warfare, the enemy doesn't wear uniforms, he lives
among civilians. If you're not going to fight that war, and it's going
to be very bloody, then you shouldn't go all.
GEORGE NEGUS: Will they pull out? There's talk now of some
exit
occurring early next year?
MICHAEL SCHEUER: I think they will pull out because they can't
win.
They're facing an eroding position. They take little successes like
they've had in Anbar province and extrapolate that to a nation wide
success and it's not the case.
GEORGE NEGUS: The PM again says he's never heard of you.
MICHAEL SCHEUER: I believe that, I'm not well known at all or
perhaps...
GEORGE NEGUS: But you have probably heard some of his
utterance. He
says that the pulling out would be tantamount to admitting defeat and
that would tarnish America's image in the world even further and would
be handing the whole thing over to the terrorists as he says?
MICHAEL SCHEUER: All of that is correct sir but we're going to
be
defeated if we don't vastly increase the number of people we have on
the ground and fight with a great more bloody mindedness. I think the
PM is absolutely right in that.
GEORGE NEGUS: How can we fight with more bloody mindedness as
you put
it, at the same time get out of there with any sort of honour?
MICHAEL SCHEUER: We have to do one or the other. There's no
way to get
out with any honour now. If we leave now, it's going to be very clear
to the Islamic world that Islamists, bin Laden and his allies beats the
Americans. There's no way around that. For - that's just a fact of
life. Do you want to stay there and bleed young lives and money for a
war you can't win? I think that's the question. Not a war you can't win
but a war you refuse to win.
GEORGE NEGUS: Is it also possible that after all this time
that
so-called Coalition of the willing, and its leaders is still missing
the point about what this is about, that's it's ultimately about the
fact that the situation in the Middle East, Israel and the occupied
territories has not been resolved?
MICHAEL SCHEUER: It's more than that. It's the willing, the
decision to
deliberately mislead voters into believing that this war has nothing to
do with what the West has done in the Middle East for the last 50
years. It is perhaps most damagingly nor the United States and the West
is our support for tyrannies and police states in the Islamic world for
the last half-century because we need oil. Oil is a national security
interest, as opposed to having some Mrs Mohamed voting in an Iraqi
election which is unimportant in term of our national security. I am
not sure what part oil played in the decision to go to war. I think it
probably played some part, but more importantly, then that, as long as
we're dependent on Middle East oil we have to support the police states
that rule the Middle East and therefore we anger the Islamists and we
earn their military activity.
GEORGE NEGUS: Gone too far for these differences to be
resolved?
MICHAEL SCHEUER: We cannot resolve these differences. The
answer to
this is almost a policy of deflection. We're not the main enemies of
the Islamists, we're in their way. America, it's probably a blow to our
ego but we are not the main enemy. They want us out of the Middle East
because according to their game plan they think if we're gone the
support for Israel and the support for the Saudis and the Egyptians
that goes with us will allow them finally to settle affairs in their
own homeland.
GEORGE NEGUS: Good to talk to you. If I see the PM I'll give
him your
regards?
MICHAEL SCHEUER: My best regards, thank you.
GEORGE NEGUS: Thank you Michael.