Latest Michael Scheuer Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• The Islamists started this war. They explained to us as clearly as General Giap and Ho Chi Minh explained to us why they were fighting us, and we have ignored it. Mrs. Clinton has ignored it, Bill Clinton, George Bush, Barack Obama. The idea that they're attacking us because of our culture is insane. We are now waging a war against them culturally. We're trying to impose democracy, women's rights, parliamentary systems on a people who don't want it. They're going to fight that.

  Michael Scheuer

  War, Fighting, Ideas

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

• You just have to come to grips with the fact that people don't like to be invaded or bombed by anybody. And America has been engaged in that.

  Michael Scheuer

  America, People, Facts

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

• Israelis are wrong in not looking for a change in the relationship with the United States that would put it more in perspective - that we are the great power, they are the minor power. I don't think there are a great many American parents who will want to sacrifice their soldiers and children so Israel can maintain the West Bank. When that becomes clear, I think Israel's days are numbered as an ally that is never questioned or criticized.

  Michael Scheuer

  Children, Sacrifice, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

• It's going to become clear that the impact of our policies rather than our way of life is what's attracting animosity and warfare on us. And I think there is going to be a surge from the bottom up that will begin to straighten things out. Because Americans, in the long run, are not going to want their daughters and their sons to die overseas so the al Saud family can continue raping Saudi Arabia's revenue.

  Michael Scheuer

  Daughter, Running, Son

  Source: www.pbs.org

• What we face is a scared populace, and because it's scared, it's willing to put up with what I think are inevitably more moves toward the constriction of civil liberties, mobility within the country, the ability to travel overseas, all of those things we have long taken for granted.

  Michael Scheuer

  Country, Moving, Taken

  Source: www.pbs.org

• So what we have is an American foreign policy that is inextricably linked to domestic matters. It is very dangerous for a politician who desires nothing more than to stay in office to address the mindset that any change in policy is appeasement. And Americans will accept that for a certain amount of time.

  Michael Scheuer

  Office, Desire, Addresses

  Source: www.pbs.org

• You become an anti-Semite. And as powerful as the Israeli lobby is, the Saudi lobby is just as powerful. In fact, the Saudis probably have more money to throw around, and they suborn former U.S. intelligence officials, former ambassadors, former generals to support them from within by lobbying the Congress and other American institutions.

  Michael Scheuer

  Powerful, Support, Facts

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Our relationship with Israel is another reason we're being attacked. But an American politician - whether Muslim or not - who criticizes Israel as a martyrdom operation in American politics cannot survive as an official or as a politician.

  Michael Scheuer

  Israel, Politician, Reason

  Source: www.pbs.org

• I know these days it sounds a little odd, but American governments are very fearful of European reaction. They were afraid we would be considered gunslingers.

  Michael Scheuer

  Government, Sound, Would Be

  Source: www.pbs.org

• You cannot possibly expect even the most illiterate person on Earth to believe that you really want a democracy in Iraq while you are paying Mubarak $3 billion a year to pretend he doesn't hate Israel. And you're providing the military and diplomatic umbrella that protects the fascist government, if you will, of the al Sauds.

  Michael Scheuer

  Hate, Military, Believe

  Source: www.pbs.org

• We've gone thorough religious wars and civil wars. America has gone through slavery, we've all gone through two world wars, segregation. Ultimately it's been a bloody, trying, wasteful, but eventually positive struggle.

  Michael Scheuer

  Religious, War, Struggle

  Source: www.pbs.org

• There is no way to avoid the reality that the American government in the past years has been the most spectacularly hypocrisy-driven government in the world. We rival the Soviet Union in some stages, in some ways, in hypocrisy.

  Michael Scheuer

  Past, Reality, Government

  Source: www.pbs.org

• I also think that there is a huge failure in the American education system to educate Americans about where we, our system, our government, came from. And to some extent this failure is shared in places like Britain and Canada and Australia.

  Michael Scheuer

  Thinking, Government, Australia

  Source: www.pbs.org

• You can forgive your leaders for not knowing the intricacies of Islamic history. You cannot forgive them for not knowing their own. And when you look at American democracy, where did it start? It started, if you need to pick a point, at Runnymede in 1215. We have now been at this process, we and our English-speaking allies, for 800 years.

  Michael Scheuer

  Islamic, Years, Knowing

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Just as some of the most ardent political ideologues in the West are young people, revolutionaries, the '60s generation, - in Islam some of the most religious people are the youngsters. But more important than that, the prophet - in his writings, in his traditions - and the Koran itself say that the Muslim youth are the ones whom the future depends on and that it's up to them to do the fighting.

  Michael Scheuer

  Religious, Writing, Fighting

  Source: www.pbs.org

• First of all, there's no separation of church and state in the Islamic world. They're one and the same. And so when President Bush or Senator Kerry or Prime Minister Blair says, "Look, adopt our secular democracy, look at how good we've done. We have a wonderful level of standard of living for our people," what many Muslims hear is, "Turn your back on God and follow what men say."

  Michael Scheuer

  Islamic, Men, People

  Source: www.pbs.org

• The second part of that war was that Muslims came from all over the country to Pakistan, and they met each other. For the first time those men had an awareness of the Islamic world as a whole, not of just Egypt or Algeria or Indonesia, but of what Muslims call the Uma, the Islamic community. And that's an extraordinarily important thing. And that emanated in Pakistan.

  Michael Scheuer

  Country, War, Islamic

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Islam is a civilization that is fractured linguistically, ethnically, sectarian-wise, as ours is. What bin Laden has done, though, is to identify a number of issues that are tangible and visceral for Muslims. His indictment list of Western support for Arab tyranny, our ability to keep oil prices too low - at least until recently - our occupation of the Arabian Peninsula.

  Michael Scheuer

  Wise, Civilization, Oil

  Source: www.pbs.org

• And the fact that the Muslim world, over the course of a decade, rallied and defeated a superpower is an extraordinary symbol in the Islamic world today. You have to remember they were soundly thrashed over the last century by the West, and in the last 50years, three times by the Indians, three times by the Israelis. And so a victory against the Soviets is huge.

  Michael Scheuer

  Islamic, Victory, Three

  Source: www.pbs.org

• I think it's very instructive to look at a man like Ramsey Ahmad Yousef, who almost brought down the World Trade Center in 1993. He's short some fingers, his body is scarred, he's missing an eye - because he was practicing and not getting it right. But eventually they get it right.

  Michael Scheuer

  Eye, Men, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

• And so to dismiss these homegrown terrorists as boobs, which is one of the terms that was used in one of the New York newspapers after the Miami raid, is true now, but to bet on that is I think a sure way to lose your bank account.

  Michael Scheuer

  New York, Thinking, Way

  Source: www.pbs.org

• The Western world doesn't really give enough credit to the importance in history of the Soviet invasion and the subsequent war in Afghanistan. For us it was a sideshow of the Cold War. For the Islamic world it was an unprovoked infidel invasion of a Muslim country not unlike Iraq.

  Michael Scheuer

  Country, War, Islamic

  Source: www.pbs.org

• If you look at groups in the Palestine region, Hamas and the Palestine Islamic jihad, more often than not in their first operations they would accidentally blow themselves up on the way to the target or the bomb wouldn't go off.

  Michael Scheuer

  Islamic, Blow, Groups

  Source: www.pbs.org

• We have not destroyed al Qaeda, so we still have that to worry about. We have its traditional allies, the Kashmiri groups, the groups that are operating now in Iraq, and now we have a third tier of threat amongst the Muslims that live in the West and who are inspired to do something against the West by the example of the other two tiers.

  Michael Scheuer

  Two, Iraq, Worry

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Initial incompetence is not a reason to be dismissive of capabilities. Al Qaeda itself was incompetent when it started as a terrorist organization. And clearly it's gone from blowing themselves up to knocking down the World Trade Center.

  Michael Scheuer

  Organization, Gone, World

  Source: www.pbs.org