This NY Times Book Review reports on the controversial new book, Imperial Hubris by a current Central Intelligence Agency officer who was able to publish the book on the condition that his real name not be revealed. This is the second book by “Anonymous” (his first was Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam and the Future of America) and his latest book is certain to generate controversy among both hardliners on Iraq and critics of the administration’s policy.
As Gerald Posner noted in his earlier Why America Slept : The Failure to Prevent 9/11, Imperial Hubris excoriates America’s political, military and intelligence establishment (going back to the mid-70’s, with the qualified exception of President Reagan and his C.I.A. director, William J. Casey). Moreover, the book also calls for a complete re-evaluation of the nation’s foreign policy toward Muslims and the Middle East:

If the country’s foreign policy remains status quo, Anonymous warns, “America’s military confrontation with Islam” will broaden “with escalating human and economic expense.” He predicts that Al Qaeda “will attack the continental United States again, that its next strike will be more damaging than that of 11 September 2001, and could include use of weapons of mass destruction.”
In addition, Anonymous accuses United States leaders, elites and media of being in denial about the nature of the Qaeda threat and the balance sheet on the war on terror: he argues that America must stop using the terrorist paradigm for Al Qaeda and accept “the fact” that the group is “leading a popular, worldwide, and increasingly powerful Islamic insurgency,” and he asserts that United States victories against Al Qaeda have thus far been tactical ones that have failed to slow “the shift in strategic advantage toward al Qaeda.”

And even though he advocates a harsher approach to fighting radical Islamic fascists, Anonymous is not a supporter of the Bush Administration’s decision to invade Iraq:

[Anonymous] sees the American invasion of Iraq as “an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantages.” For Osama bin Laden, Anonymous argues, the American invasion and occupation of Iraq were like “a Christmas present you long for but never expected to receive” ? a gift from Washington that “will haunt, hurt, and hound Americans for years to come.” He sees Iraq becoming another breeding ground for Al Qaeda, and the postwar insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan as magnets for anti-American fighters.
“U.S. forces and policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990’s,” he writes. “As a result, I think it fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden’s only indispensable ally.”

Anonymous even disputes the Bush Administration’s assessment of Al Qaeda’s goals for its war against the United States:

Anonymous contests the argument put out by members of the Bush administration that Mr. bin Laden wants to destroy America because he hates our values, freedoms and ideas. In Anonymous’s view, the Qaeda leader hates us “because of our policies and actions in the Muslim world” and Al Qaeda’s attacks are meant to advance a set of clear, focused and limited foreign policy goals: namely, an end to American aid to Israel: the removal of American forces from the Arabian Peninsula; an end to the American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq; an end to American support for repressive, apostate Muslim regimes like Saudi Arabia; an end to Amerian support for Russia, India and China against their Muslim militants; and an end to American pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low.

But make no mistake about it, Anonymous definitely does not propose dealing with Al Qaeda with kid gloves:

If current American policies toward the Muslim world are not changed, Anonymous writes near the end of this harrowing and often deliberately provocative volume, America will be left with only a military option for defending itself ? an option he says that should be used not “daintily,” as it has been in recent years, but with the sort of bloody-minded ferocity used “in France and on Pacific islands, and from skies over Tokyo and Dresden” during World War II.