Foreign Policy Mag--we're losing the war

According to a survey conducted by Foreign Policy magazine and, as AFP put it "a Washington-based think tank", we're losing the GWoT. The primary cause? George W. Bush, of course:

“It’s clear to nearly all that Bush and his team have had a totally unrealistic view of what they can accomplish with military force and threats of force,” he said.

By the way, the think tank AFP casually refused to mention was the Center for American Progress, run by former Clinton official John Podesta and featuring Tom Daschle as a contributor.

The participants were not identified, but several officials interviewed for the story provided some insight. One of most outspoken is former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, who was infamously blessed by CIA brass to write a book critical of the Bush adminstration shortly before the 2004 election:

“We’re clearly losing. Today, Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and their allies have only one indispensable ally: the US’ foreign policy towards the Islamic world.”

Scheuer was the founder of the original Rendition Program in the mid 90s. That same program is now the scourge of the modern liberal despite the fact it's original intention was to take terrorists and fly them on CIA airlines to other countries allowing torture. Strangely, there were no loud outcries back in the 90s, as folks seemed more concerned with things like this. Even at this late date the hypocrisy is still breathtaking.

Scheuer keeps resurfacing, just like a bad penny. He was quoted again Tuesday discussing yet another leak-based New York Times story about how General Hayden has closed the CIA's famed bin Laden unit, ironically named after Scheuer's son.

"This will clearly denigrate our operations against Al Qaeda,"

I wonder how he can possibly know, being retired and all. But Mr. Scheuer seems to have a lot of post-retirement knowledge, such as how our invasion of Iraq was the worst move ever made:

"The cumulative impact of several events in the past two years has gone a good way towards increasing Muslim hatred for Americans, simply because they are Americans,” he said, citing Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the East-West row over cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed".

It's one thing to say the Iraq war has enflamed people prone to flammability, but for him to include the Mohammed cartoons in his pushback smacks of utter cluelessness. The cartoons had nothing to do with America and incidentally, Bush himself condemned them, which many on the right renounced.

But speaking of enflaming "the street", surely he hasn't forgotten how high the temperature rose after Clinton bombed Baghdad, Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998. Those events triggered bin Laden's proclamation to "kill Americans, wherever you find them" which was followed by the Cole bombing, while back home Mohammed Atta was setting up shop in Florida.

It's hard to imagine the hate getting much worse than it was in late 2000. Or for that matter, 1993 when the Brooklyn Cell was at work trying to bring down the WTC and blow the bridges and tunnels. It's just as hard to imagine going back to the failed policies that allowed those attacks to occur.