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Quote by Michael Scheuer

“We're being attacked, Britain is being attacked, our allies are being attacked because we've installed and backed and implemented a set of policies in the Middle East for the last years or more.”

Quote by Michael Scheuer

Author

Michael Scheuer
Michael Scheuer

Michael Scheuer is an American blogger born in 1952. He is known for his in-depth analysis of Middle Eastern politics and security. more

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“And when you say the policies are what caused this war - American policies - that's not to say that they're wrong. It's not to say that the policies were made by madmen or evil people. It's simply to say that you better understand the motivation of your enemy if you're going to defeat him. And the man who is motivated by a belief that his religion is being attacked by a superpower is much more dangerous than a man who's mad at you because you have women in the workplace.”

“Any strong Muslim regime that threatens Israel, and we did. He said the Americans only want oil, and, of course, Iraq has the second-largest reserves. And he said that we will always replace God's law with manmade law. And finally that we intended to occupy and destroy Islamic sanctities. And I suspect that in our government, very few people knew that Iraq was the second-holiest place in Islam, after the Arabian Peninsula.”

“The whole importance of Iraq is that we have now created two things. One, Iraq is in the Arab heartland in terms of an attraction for people who want to fight the Americans and their allies. It's far greater than anything Afghanistan was aftertheSoviets invaded. It's easy to get to, there's no trouble with languages.”

“We now have some years of very reliable polling by Western firms in the Islamic world, in multiple Islamic countries. And invariably, the question that asks, "Do you view U.S. foreign policy as an attack on Islam and Muslims?" is maxed out. Whether it's Jordan or Indonesia or Egypt, you get 80,85 percent of people saying "Yes."”

“I think you can take the recent war in Lebanon as a very good example of how this plays. The Americans and their allies clearly stood back - clearly in the eyes of Muslims - and basically said to the Israelis, "Do what you need to do, and we'll hold the ring for you and not call a cease-fire." That perception in the Muslim world very much played to the anti-American sentiment.”

“But more important, I think, is the criticism bin Laden has made publicly over the past 10 years that Muslim governments cannot even protect their own people. And more than that, they'll often collude with the infidels. And if you recall, the initial reaction of the Arab league was to criticize Hezbollah and damn Hezbollah for the war. And they eventually had to turn 180degrees and support Hezbollah.”