Welcome to the Michael Scheuer official website.
For a long time, it struck me as quite egotistical — and probably arrogant — to think that I had anything to say about contemporary U.S. foreign policy and the perils of its relentless interventionism that would merit a website of my own. And to tell the truth, I still have doubts that (a) I have much to say that is insightful on the issue and (b) that anyone will much care what I have to say.
Still, I have had a good number of responses — positive and negative — to what I have written on foreign-policy issues since I resigned from the CIA in November 2004. Since that date, I have been privileged to have had the opportunity to write for Antiwar.com and LewRockwell.com. I want to offer my thanks and sincere appreciation for the space they gave me and to say very clearly that by starting my own site, I am in no way criticizing those sites. Indeed, I should be most pleased — not to say shocked — if this site has anywhere near the substantive success or level of interest Antiwar.com and LewRockwell.com have achieved.
That said, I finally decided to try a site of my own because I am not fully committed to an unyielding anti-war position. I certainly do believe that we are engaged in far too many wars; that most of them are unnecessary; and that almost all of them are the consequence of Washington, D.C.’s rabid post-1945 interventionism. To the extent that Washington [D.C.] — under both Democrats and Republicans — stops intervening in overseas affairs that are of neither genuine concern to the United States nor threats to U.S. interests, we will find ourselves in far fewer wars. And I might add, in passing, that if Americans begin to aggressively insist that all wars in which their country becomes engaged must — per the Constitution — be formally declared by the vote of Congress, we would likewise have far fewer wars.
But I do believe some wars are both necessary and unavoidable; indeed, I believe that human beings are hard-wired for war; that they are not perfectible; and that the only mercy in war is an enormous application of military power that wins victory for the United States in the shortest possible time. At present, the only war that falls into the necessary and unavoidable category, in my view, is our war against al-Qaeda and the growing Islamist forces it leads and inspires.
Motivated by Washington, D.C.’s interventionist policies in the Muslim world, that foe declared war on America in August 1996. Sadly, we have yet to find a U.S. political leader in either party who will forthrightly accept the fact that we are at war with the Islamists; nor have we found one who will tell the American people that we are at war because of what the U.S. government does in the Muslim world — unqualified support for Israel, support for Arab tyrannies, invading Iraq, etc. — and not for who we are and how we live here in North America.
Today, Americans are rightly suspicious of calling our struggle with the Islamists a war because they — again rightly — cannot believe that people would wage a nearly 14-year war and gladly die in the conflict because American women go to university, there are early primaries in Iowa every four years, and many of us have a beer or two after work. The consistent lies of our last four presidents, leading generals, much of the media, and nearly all of the academy — “They hate our freedoms, not what we do” — have misled and blinded Americans to the very real threat the Islamists pose to domestic security in the United States and some of our interests overseas.
My primary interest, then, in starting this website, is to discuss the almost totally negative impact of Washington, D.C.’s bipartisan lust to intervene abroad, as well as to talk about how interventionism undermines U.S. security, the nation’s economy, and our country’s social cohesion. I also think it is appropriate to discuss here how far we have strayed from the Founding Fathers’ vision of what America and Americans should be at home and how the republic should conduct itself in the wider world. This site will argue that the Founders’ recipe for safeguarding America in 1789 remains pertinent today: all Americans must be vigilant of their liberty; politically active in its defense; broadly educated to help assess politicians, policies, and foreign entities that threaten that liberty; and armed to defeat enemies, foreign or domestic, who threaten that liberty.
It will quickly become clear that I am not an original thinker on these issues, but rather a person who was educated with, and is loyal to, the ideas of those brilliant and far-seeing men who founded our republic. I look forward to presenting my ideas and commentary on this site, and, even more, I look forward to considering, discussing, and learning from the responses of my fellow citizens.
