An equal-opportunity offender regarding U.S. foreign policy in "Marching Toward Hell"

"Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq"

by Michael Scheuer

Free Press, 364 pp., $27

"Marching Toward Hell" is a dark, opinionated and radical book. Its author, Michael Scheuer, was a CIA counterterrorism officer until 2004, and in the 1990s, he headed the CIA's unit that attempted to understand and track Osama bin Laden. Scheuer, who wrote "Imperial Hubris" (2004) and revealed his authorship after he resigned from the agency, says America's leaders don't understand our enemy and are trooping toward defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He argues that by occupying two countries in the world of Islam, America has undertaken a "nation-building" mission that is culturally impossible. The inevitable defeat, he says, will prove to our enemies that America "never wins any war it fights."

He takes aim at both the left and the right. He says the Republican neoconservatives, who toot the victory horn loudest, are in thrall to the interests of Israel, a country he says is "virtually irrelevant and manifestly counterproductive to the national-security interests of the United States." The Democrats, he says, seem to believe that a new Marshall Plan might remake the Islamic world into secular multiparty states with Planned Parenthood clinics. Both sides, he thinks, put too much trust in "the ballet of diplomacy" in fighting terrorists.

Scheuer argues for a foreign policy "focused on genuine life-and-death national interests." If enemies are trying to kill you, kill them first. When President Clinton was given opportunities to kill bin Laden, he wouldn't do it, Scheuer says, because an empty mosque might be hit. When Clinton ordered Iraq's intelligence headquarters bombed to retaliate for an attempt on ex-president Bush, he ordered an attack at night, when only the janitors were there. There were always diplomatic reasons — "nuances" — for halfway hits. After Sept. 11, Scheuer says, President Bush should have gone into Afghanistan quickly. Bush took a month, and bin Laden escaped.

"Marching Toward Hell" is the foreign-policy advice of a middle-level guy who once ran the CIA's "rendition" program to kidnap suspected terrorists. Scheuer has no patience for "nuancers" who always have a reason not to act. A country with enemies, he says, needs "a baseline reputation for ruthlessness."

And yet for all the sharp teeth, Scheuer is against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. If you have to hit terrorists, he says, hit them — not all their relations. Don't occupy Iraq with soldiers and aid workers. Forget about creating a constitutional democracy for the Afghans. It's not who they are.

America, he says, should stay out of other people's wars and fight only its own.

A striking aspect of Scheuer's book is that it portrays the radical Islamists as essentially defensive. "The words of the main Islamist leaders," he writes, " ... amount to an argument that you have your civilizations and lands, stay in yours, stay out of ours, and leave us alone." Scheuer seems willing to grant them that, as long as they stop attacking us — and, one supposes, as long as they keep selling oil.

He also has respect for bin Laden, who he says has "eloquence, strategic vision, patience, combat record and management skills." He offers no comparable praise for any recent president of the United States, including the one he says he liked, Ronald Reagan. "What America needs, in a sense," he writes, "is an Osama bin Laden of its own."

At least he said, "in a sense." Even Scheuer has nuances. But there are not many of them in this book, which will cause offense to mainstream conservatives, progressives and mandarins of American foreign policy. Scheuer is provocative and a delight to read.

Bruce Ramsey is a Seattle Times

editorial writer.