Former CIA spy Reuel Marc Gerecht wrote a piece for the July/August issue of the Atlantic titled The Counterterrorist Myth, explaining why the CIA was powerless to do anything about Osama Bin Laden.

A former senior Near East Division operative says, “The CIA probably doesn’t have a single truly qualified Arabic-speaking officer of Middle Eastern background who can play a believable Muslim fundamentalist who would volunteer to spend years of his life with shitty food and no women in the mountains of Afghanistan. For Christ’s sake, most case officers live in the suburbs of Virginia. We don’t do that kind of thing.” A younger case officer boils the problem down even further: “Operations that include diarrhea as a way of life don’t happen.”

In a fascinating new interview, Gerecht talks about the necessity of fear when dealing with Al Qaeda and other Islamist terror groups. He argues that Bin Laden has managed to bring militant Islamic fundamentalism into the mainstream of Muslim society in an unprecedented fashion, and that the only way to fight it is to maintain a strong military presence in Afghanistan and possibly other Middle Eastern countries—starting with Iraq.

The one thing that everyone in the Middle East knows is that we have been running the last ten years from a direct head-to-head conflict with Saddam Hussein. That’s why I think Iraq must be the next place we go after Afghanistan. It is, more than anything else, the one issue that has cracked the awe of America in the Middle East, and I think it is the one issue that we must handle if we really are serious about regaining the essential fear and respect without which American interests and American citizens are simply not safe. We should not deceive ourselves that one victory in Afghanistan, as overwhelming as it is, necessarily has a long shelf-life. The Gulf War victory, for many Americans, seemed more overwhelming, yet the Gulf War became in Middle Eastern eyes quite quickly a defeat.

Here he responds to a question about the Powell doctrine of coalition building:

Those efforts actually diminish the United States throughout the Muslim world. This is part of a problem that the United States has had for a long time, and the source of that problem, certainly diplomatically, has largely been located in the Near Eastern Bureau of the Department of State. They have consistently failed to realize that the primary element that gives you respect in the Middle East is the awe that you possess. Now, there are other factors about the United States that come into play. You do not have Muslims throughout the entire Middle East lining up at American consulates to obtain visas because they fear the United States and they want to go there because they’re scared. They want to come to America because of all the promise that the United States holds, promise they do not have in their own land. But if you do not understand the fact that you must command fear—that you must, as they say in Arabic, have hayba, awe—if you do not use that as the cutting edge of your diplomacy, then you’re going to end up always looking weak, if not foolish. The United States has had a very uncomfortable time, particularly since the Vietnam War, in projecting power. We’d rather project something else—our peaceful virtues. However, American ideals and American power are glued together, and if you don’t project strength and military awe, the ideals aren’t going to go anywhere either—at least in the Middle East, where power politics reign supreme. Secretary Powell’s coalition—which at its Arab core is Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan—in Muslim eyes strongly suggests that we need moral camouflage for our actions, that our actions are somehow more legitimate by having Muslim partners. This isn’t Middle Eastern realpolitik at work—it’s American uncertainty and political correctness elevated into strategy.