Marching Toward Hell - A Review

Scheuer, Michael. Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam after Iraq. New York, London, and Toronto: Free Press, 2008. xvi + 364 pages. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $27.00.

Michael Scheuer spent some twenty years in the CIA, including three years as head of Alec Station, the virtual station in Langley charged with intelligence on Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. He wrote two previous books, both published anonymously because Scheuer was still employed by CIA at the time. I have seen him a time or two on The Newshour on PBS discussing questions about terrorism. He is also a highly opinionated man who doesn’t seem to mind putting controversial views front and center. I say “seems” because Mr. Scheuer’s feeling were apparently hurt by criticism of his views as expressed in his earlier books.

Scheuer’s thesis is fairly simple, although both the evidence for it and his projected policy options to deal with have a number of ramifications. Scheuer restates his thesis a number of times in the course of the book. That thesis is that the Islamist groups who have attacked the United States and American interests are not motivated by some generalized hatred toward our lifestyle and our freedom. Indeed, polls taken in the Muslim world consistently show widespread approval of the American people and our way of life. Rather, these groups are motivated by dislike for a number of specific policies and actions which the United States has pursued over a period of many years.

I think I should say two things here. First, Mr. Scheuer is not saying that anything the United States might have done would justify terrorist actions. He is saying, however, that such actions may be motivated by other people’s perceptions of our polices and actions. Second, there is another book out recently, Choice of Enemies, which makes something of the same point, though at greater length and with more sophistication. The United States did not have to go to war against any of the Middle Eastern countries, nor were we forced to befriend any of them. We chose to support certain countries rather than others, and we have backed some regimes and tendencies within countries, at some cost to their rivals.

What are the policies and actions of the United States which have made us unpopular to the point that people all over the Muslim world believe that the killing of American soldiers and civilian is acceptable? Mr. Scheuer offers a list of six items:

1. The U.S. military and civilian presence in the Arab Peninsula
   
2. Unqualified U.S. support for Israel
   
3. U.S. support for states oppressing Muslims, especially China, India, and Russia
   
4. U.S. exploitation of Muslim oil and suppression of its price
   
5. U.S. military presence in the Islamic world – Arabian Peninsula, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.
   
6. U.S. support, protection, and funding of Arab police states.
   

Much of Marching Toward Hell is devoted to explicating this list, pointing out how our actions and policies appear to the residents of Muslim countries, and explaining why the United States has adopted such a self-defeating posture.

The first point is that, from a Muslim point of view, the United States declarations of support for democracy and freedom mean very little. Since the end of World War II, we have consistently supported military regimes, kingdoms, and dictatorships which have oppressed their own peoples. We have armed and re-armed Israel, and declared that we would never abandon Israel, when Israel has engaged in constant violence against Muslim people. But perhaps the worst thing is that we are there. We are present, in force, with bases in a number of Muslim countries, including parts of the Arabian peninsula which are regarded as sacred ground.

Mr. Scheuer tries to explain why we pursue these policies. I’m not sure that his explanations are sufficient, though they may contribute something to the debate. He strongly believes that we are losing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that we will continue to lose wars in the Muslim world unless we get out of Cold War habits of thinking, try to understand the inhabitants of those countries, and disengage from local politics.

Scheuer contends that the Cold War casts a long shadow on U.S. military and political attitudes. One example is our tendency to try to find proxies to fight our wars for us. The failure of our Iraq policy may be attributed to the simple fact that Iraqis were not willing to kill other Iraqis (at least, Iraqis of the same confession) to forward our purposes. Similarly, I doubt that any Pakistani government will be able to sustain itself by cooperating in our mission to kill hundreds or thousands of Pakistani people. People helped us fight the Soviet Union because they believed that the Russians were evil, and there was plenty of evidence for that view. Scheuer doubts that we can persuade Muslims to believe that their fellow Muslims are evil.

This is partly due to a problem we have in much of the world. We don’t learn the local languages, we know nothing of the local cultures, we expect everybody to act just the way they do back home in Ashtabula. Do you think that the Iraqis are unaware of the contempt in which they are held by U.S. soldiers who speak no Arabic, and that they do not return that contempt in spades.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Scheuer recommends that we attend to American interests first and stop arming both sides in a religious war. Who is responsible for the Arab-Israeli conflict lasting for 60 years? We are. And neither Israel’s interests nor those of the Saudis are identical to those of the United States.

No matter how you look at it, Michael Scheuer has written a contentious book. The prose isn’t always elegant, but his sincerity shines through. Sincerity is, of course, no guarantee that Mr. Scheuer is right. This book will anger some people, perhaps especially supporters of Israel. But it raises questions that are worth raising and discussing.