Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq (No Series)

by Scheuer, Michael

  3. Brothers, all Muslims now know that you have gone many extra miles to warn the American people, and thereby you have fully obeyed the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and followed the honorable practices of Saladin, Islam’s first great defender against the medieval Christian Crusaders.21 But sadly, dear Brothers, I do not believe the Americans will heed your words. Though you spoke directly to them, they have heard President Bush and Vice President Cheney describe your warning as “words of desperation” and contemptuously reject your truce offer by flippantly proclaiming: “We don’t negotiate with terrorists, we put them out of business.” And amazingly, after Brother Osama’s recent speech, President Bush’s homeland security advisor told the media al-Qaeda is “all but impotent,” apparently forgetting she was responding to our challenge and that America is losing two wars to the “impotent” mujahedin.22 Brothers, many Americans are going to die because of their leaders’ arrogance and, while regrettable, this arrogance is, all thanks to Allah, good news for al-Qaeda and its allies. It means the government of the world’s richest and most powerful nation still does not understand the motivation of the mujahedin, the goals for which we fight, or God’s promise of victory that makes us steadfast.

  4. Because of your speeches, Brothers, and because it is eleven years since you sent me to America as al-Qaeda’s intelligence chief, and more than six years after the blessed September raids, I thought I should send you my appraisal of where al-Qaeda and its allies stand in regard to America’s understanding of what motivates our movement and what it is trying to do. I also write because the results of the November 2006 U.S. congressional elections and their aftermath have shown—as you predicted, Brother Osama—that the Americans have neither the will, patience, political cohesion, nor ruthlessness to continue their war against us. Their will is cracking, Brother, and even President Bush’s father’s friends—the Iraq Study Group—told him that the mujahedin are beating America in Iraq.23 Brothers, Bush has rejected the group’s conclusion and disregarded its advice. He has now sent five more brigades to Iraq. Fifty brigades would have been a problem for the mujahedin, but five will make no difference; the Americans will fight more, bleed more, but still will have to leave Iraq in defeat. For this all thanks are due to Allah. And thanks also are due to the Almighty for the surge of support and confidence our victory in Iraq will earn from the Muslim masses. That support will be as great as and perhaps greater than that which arose when Allah imposed defeat on the Red Army in Afghanistan through the rifles of the mujahedin. And when the Americans leave Iraq, many of our brothers will go to Afghanistan again to drive the American-led infidels to their doom as they did the atheist Russians.

  5. To begin, Brothers, let me first say that I have rigorously followed your directions. As a white American Muslim convert, I and my family have lived an ordinary life here in the suburbs outside Washington. I have been employed in the same well-paid engineering position for these eleven years and was just promoted to a management position. As you told me, I have not associated with anyone who the Americans could remotely identify as an “Islamic extremist.” I have, as you ordered, told no one—not even my American wife—that I had the honor to serve God by fighting the Communists in Afghanistan. As you directed, I have closely observed everyday life, read widely in the American media and scholarly and scientific journals, and listened to and studied the words of major U.S. political leaders. After more than a decade, and on the eve of al-Qaeda’s next raid on America, therefore, I thought it best to send you my assessment of what I see as the downside and the upside of our fighting the United States, and on which side the balance of advantages currently stands in the war brother Osama calls the bleed-America-to-bankruptcy struggle.

  The Downside: An Unimaginably Powerful Country

  6. Brothers, we must always keep focused on the huge downside of this war: we are being hunted and attacked by the most powerful nation in history. And despite the heavy personnel losses al-Qaeda and its allies have suffered, may God accept them as martyrs, the United States has not yet made its full power felt. The American leaders appear to believe that we are afraid of and intimidated by their military power, may God help them cultivate this delusion. Even more, they are afraid of what the world will think of them if they use their military might in its full measure. Praise to God, Brothers, these are not the Americans who annihilated their enemies in Germany and Japan; these are the Americans of Vietnam, but even weaker in terms of resolve and ferocity. Still, the American people hate us intensely for the September raid of the blessed nineteen,24 may God reward them, and their efforts against us are powered by an amazingly productive economy that has recovered much of what was lost from that blow. With this in mind, Brothers, we should rejoice over the 2006 U.S. election results and falling public support for the war in Iraq, but we should not deceive ourselves into believing that the American people hate us with any less venom. Indeed, it is my view that the American people are far more bloody minded than their leaders, and would have supported and applauded a far more aggressive and destructive war against us than Washington has waged.

  7. Another problem for us, Brothers, is that American society, although far from perfectly equitable, is on the whole tolerant, including toward its Muslim citizens. At this time, Brothers, we do not have in America the advantage provided by the racist and anti-Islamic policies followed by the European Union countries. We therefore have hard and dangerous organizational work to do in the United States because we cannot wait for the demographic victory that will occur, God willing, in Europe where, as Brother Ayman has said, Allah is ensuring that the cradles of Muslim homes will ultimately return Spain and all of Europe to the Muslim ummah. And as you know, however, we do have a sound foundation of young men on which to build al-Qaeda in America as a mid-2007 poll showed. Among Muslim youth here under thirty years of age, 26 percent believe martyrdom operations are sometimes justified.25 I must also stress again that the military, emotional, patriotic, and economic power of the United States has been neither harnessed nor focused; the latent power of this country is enormous, and we have yet to feel its impact. God willing, the Americans will continue to accept their leader’s half-measures.

  The Upside: God Has Given His Enemy Incompetent Leaders

  8. Brothers, we must acknowledge and be thankful for the bounty of advantages God has given us: Brothers, believe me, the Americans’ leaders are either soundly asleep, unwilling to face reality, or fundamentally stupid. Based on my experiences, observations, discussions, and studies, U.S. leaders do not have a clue as to what their war with us is about. This is, thanks to God, our greatest advantage. As examples, I cite the following for your consideration:

  A.) They do not understand our motivation; as Brother al-Amriki would put it, “they have not figured out what makes us tick.” Their political leaders of both parties, as well as their media, military, economic, and academic elites, continue to claim al-Qaeda hates America for “what it believes and how it lives” and not “for what the United States does in the Islamic world.” And you have seen for yourselves, brothers, how Bush and Blair responded to our 2005 attacks in London: Like trained parrots they exclaimed: “The terrorists hate us for our freedoms not for what we do.”26 And in 2006, after Canadian police arrested a group of young mujahedin, Canada’s prime minister described our brothers’ activities as an “attack on Canadian values.”27 Then in summer 2007 the Australian prime minister said that the blessed operation by the mujahid Muslim doctors in London and Glasgow was conducted by those “who hate our way of life” and “oppose the way we live.”28 Thanks to God, Brothers, human ignorance and self-deception know no borders, but only God’s love for Muslim believers could have kept our enemies deceiving themselves for so long. It is worth thinking about how long this self-imposed ignorance can endure, but on that score there is good news.

  B.) The Americans are hamstrung by what some here call political correctness, which is a refusal to discuss matters of serio
us danger to their country because such debate might upset domestic politics. In some ways, Brothers, the U.S. press does not have the freedom permitted by the apostate Jordanian tyrant Abdullah. And even if our fears are realized, and Americans begin to understand that tens of millions of Muslims hate their government’s foreign policies and not their society, it would take a near-revolution in their public discourse to allow frank debate about the issue of the mujahedin’s motivation. Brothers, the indictment of the U.S. policy in the Muslim world that you have so clearly outlined has put them at a disadvantage, for to publicly debate the policies you have identified as attacks on Islam would be to ignite a firestorm in U.S. politics, for each policy is a political poison. Let me review the status of these policies.

  U.S. Support for Israel: To criticize, let alone condemn, this policy would be a martyrdom operation for any U.S. politician. Our claims that Israel leads America around by the nose are true. As you can see, dear Brothers, the Americans slavishly followed Israel’s lead and rejected the fair election of Hamas in Palestine, and they have now moved to support the apostate Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas after the lions of Hamas drove Fatah from Gaza. And all Muslims are now watching the Americans and Israelis starve Palestinian children in Gaza, while they and their European friends pour tens of millions of dollars into the accounts of their corrupt agent Abbas. This proves for Muslims the validity of Brother Osama’s warning that the Americans want to dominate not democratize the Muslim world. Currently, the Israelis and their agents in the U.S. Congress, media, and administration are leading the Americans toward war with Iran by promoting such absurdities as the existence of an alliance between our Taliban brothers and Tehran. And last winter the Israeli butcher Netanyahu told an American audience in Los Angeles that this is 1938 again and Iran is Nazi Germany; war is unavoidable he said, and Israel will not wait to be attacked. The American audience cheered, and not long afterward the Zionist Senator Lieberman said “that the Iranian government, by its actions, has declared war on us [the United States].”29 Last summer we all watched Lebanon, where the obedient American lackeys held the country tight, like a just-caught fish, while their Israeli masters gutted it. And as I write, Washington is supporting Israeli air strikes in Gaza, and American generals are building walls to divide Muslims in Baghdad. They are apparently blind to the Iraqis’belief that they are importing Israel’s apartheid methods to Iraq. If I was not living here, Brothers, I would not accept this contention, but in this country, thanks to God, criticism of Israel is not allowed. Men are called anti-Semitic and their careers are ruined if they criticize Israel. By God, even former American presidents like Carter are viciously attacked in public if they make negative comments about Israel, and it seems that the apostate Mubarak is criticized more openly in Egypt than is Israel in America. And, Brothers, the influential members of Bush’s Iraq Study Group report should put your minds at ease regarding the durability of America’s Israel policy. They wrote: “No American administration—Democratic or Republican—will ever abandon Israel.”30 Truly, God is great!

  U.S. Support for Nations That Oppress Muslims: For U.S. leaders to alter this policy would mean losing face with other, rival Great Powers. Washington does not seem to know how much its support for the genocides by Russia’s Putin against Chechen Muslims, and Beijing’s against Uighur Muslims, hurts them in the Islamic world. And practically speaking, the Americans must continue to fawn over Czar Putin because, more than sixteen years after God’s beloved mujahedin destroyed the Soviet Union, and all glory is God’s for that victory, the U.S. and Russian governments cannot account for all of the Former Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons. Only last summer the FBI director held an emergency meeting in Miami that stressed American fears—and, as you know, Brothers, with good reason—that al-Qaeda will find several and deliver them to their rightful owners. More recently, the British media published a U.K. government report describing al-Qaeda’s readiness to conduct “Hiroshima-style” attacks on Britain and America.31 Brothers, only the Lord of the Universe could have put Bush so squarely on the side of Butcher Putin and force him to abide by the Russian dictator’s will.

  U.S. Energy Policy: It is incredible, Brothers, but three decades after King Faisal’s blessed 1973 oil embargo, U.S. leaders are unwilling to install an energy policy that would remove Arab domination of their economy and those of its allies. One must earnestly and humbly thank God for the great good fortune he has given us in this regard. And Brothers, when the apostate Saudi king Abdullah agreed to expand the kingdom’s oil production by the end of the decade, President Bush unbelievably welcomed this move, which can only increase America’s dependence on Muslim oil, keep demand high, and make prices rise. Imagine, Brothers, with the steady increase in the price of a barrel of oil from $30 to above $90, our blessed financial benefactors have increased their support for the mujahedin to unprecedented levels. And what irony, Brothers Osama and Ayman, American parents are now paying exorbitant prices at the pump, and we are receiving a portion of the resulting profits to help us kill their soldier-children in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. All praise to God for this wonder.

  U.S. Support for Muslim Tyrannies: We can be confident that this policy will continue, Brothers. U.S. energy dependence means that Washington’s talk of democracy-building in the Islamic world will remain mostly talk. Indeed, pictures of President Bush’s hand-holding with the Saudi tyrant Abdullah, his economic strangling of Hamas, his befriending of the Libyan despot Qaddafi, his use of the Christian Ethiopians to invade Islamic Somalia, and his failure to condemn Mubarak for jailing candidates whose only crime is to profess “There is no God but God and Muhammed is his messenger” tell Muslims all they need to know about U.S. intentions regarding democracy for Muslims. This damaging reality is not widely recognized in America because U.S. leaders call these tyrants “allies against terrorism,” and so people here do not see the mockery of America’s heritage of freedom—which so much of the Muslim world admires—by Washington’s support for Arab tyrannies and police states in Egypt, Kuwait, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and elsewhere. This point will be underscored by Washington’s recent decision to give the tyrants in Cairo and Riyadh $60 billion worth of weapons to help them suppress and torture Muslims. And Brothers, while the Israeli lobby has a powerful and corrupting influence on the American Congress and media, the Saudi lobby—thanks to God, for whom all things are possible—is less publicly known but just as powerful, successful, and malignant. The apostate al-Sauds send their smiling English-speaking princes, like Bandar and Turki, and now the U.S.-educated al-Jubeir to be their ambassadors in America with orders to buy the U.S. Congress. Our infidel enemies naïvely believe they are dealing with the true leaders of the Arabian Peninsula. And even more, Brothers, the al-Sauds buy the loyalty of retired U.S. ambassadors, senators, congressmen, generals, and senior intelligence officers to lobby the Congress and White House on their behalf, as well as to keep the Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages full of pro–al-Saud essays to mislead Americans. And all the while, and for this all praise is due to the Lord of the Universe, the blessed Ulema in the Land of the Prophet, may God’s peace and blessings be upon him, are using funds from the al-Sauds to finance the spread of God’s word around the globe, and nowhere more aggressively than under the nose of the Bush and Brown governments in the United States and Britain. Praise to God, Islam’s huge coming generation of youth is being educated by our Ulema in what the Americans call “Wahhabism.” As this gift from God proceeds, the American elites take the al-Sauds’ word as they would take a hallucinogenic drug. It denies them contact with reality and they believe—truly they do, Brothers—that Saudi Arabia is their ally, and all the while Saudi clerics are lighting a worldwide anti-American fire. God is great.

  U.S. Military Presence in the Arabian Peninsula and Other Muslim Countries: Brothers, we also can rely on this U.S. policy. As the Pentagon builds bases in the Islamic world, the U.S. government does not see that it is voluntarily don
ning the cloak of nineteenth-century European colonialism and imperialism, thereby energizing a new generation of Mujahedin to fight in God’s path. U.S. leaders have no conception of how taking over this Sykes-Picot role from the Europeans hurts America, and rallies Muslims to Brother Osama’s views. To prove this, Bush’s Iraq Study Group has suggested that when U.S. troops are withdrawn from Iraq, some of them should be based on its periphery, perhaps in the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula. Then, in support of the Group’s call for broader occupation of Muslim lands, the Zionist U.S. Senator Lieberman also called for stationing U.S. forces in the Land of the Two Holy Mosques. And in late 2006 the Americans began a military intervention in Muslim Somalia, intent—as you predicted years ago, Brother Osama—on destroying Islam there, stealing oil from the Horn of Africa, and building military bases across the Red Sea from blessed Yemen and the Land of the Two Holy Mosques.32 Brothers, the Americans and their proxies now occupy four Islamic capitals: Kabul, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Mogadishu, and this colonial reality will not be lost on the minds of Muslims. May God keep the Americans believing that they must broaden their occupation of the Arab heartland and the Muslim world, and ignorant of each Muslim’s extremely long historical memory of European imperialism’s long record of crimes against Islam.

  9. Brothers, I must make one more point about American policy. As I have already said, God has made America blind to the hatred that the impact of their policies in the Islamic world is earning them. But Brothers, they also seem blind to the impact on Muslims of their behavior at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib prison, toward the holy Koran, their decision to burn the bodies of martyred Taliban mujahedin, and their killing of Afghan and Iraqi civilians.