Scheuer became a public figure after being outed as the anonymous author of the book Imperial Hubris (2004), in which he criticized many of the United States' assumptions about Islamist insurgencies and particularly Osama bin Laden.
[6] In September 2014, in addition to earlier "praise" received from Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State issued a press release quoting Scheuer in order to appeal to an American audience.
[5] The funding threats were pursuant to his criticism of Barack Obama's "dancing the Tel Aviv two-step" in allegedly kowtowing to the Israeli lobby, as well as Scheuer's disdaining of Obama's selection as Chief of Staff of Rahm Emanuel, "a U.S. citizen who during the 1991 Gulf War left America to serve in Israel's military.
Due to the secrecy agreement he signed as an employee of the CIA, the book is based solely on unclassified intelligence or material available from open sources such as media reports.
He writes that "the West's road to hell lies in approaching the bin Laden problem with the presumption that only the lunatic fringe could oppose what the United States is trying to accomplish through its foreign policy toward the Muslim world.
Bin Laden's philosophy is slowly harnessing the two most powerful motivating forces in contemporary international affairs: religion and nationalism.
"[21] [T]he crux of my argument is simply that America is in a war with militant Islamists that it cannot avoid; one that it cannot talk or appease its way out of; one in which our irreconcilable Islamist foes will have to be killed, an act which unavoidably will lead to innocent deaths; and one that is motivated in large measure by the impact of U.S. foreign policies in the Islamic world, one of which is unqualified U.S. support for Israel.
[22] In his second book, Imperial Hubris, a New York Times bestseller, Scheuer writes that the Islamist threat to the United States is rooted in "how easy it is for Muslims to see, hear, experience, and hate the six U.S. policies bin Laden repeatedly refers to as anti-Muslim: Scheuer contends that Al-Qaeda is following a martial strategy that is more rational than it is given credit for among Western politicians and media.
[24] In a videotape released around September 7, 2007, Osama bin Laden stated, "If you want to understand what's going on and if you would like to get to know some of the reasons for your losing the war against us, then read the book of Michael Scheuer.
He has set out the Muslim world's problems as he sees them; determined that they are caused by the United States; explained why they must be remedied; and outlined how he will try to do so.
"[29] This erroneous rhetoric, according to Scheuer, is not only to be found in the media and among politicians, but even in the 9/11 Commission Report, in which bin Laden and his followers were identified "as takfiris, who kill Muslims if they don't agree with them.
Speaking on the BBC News on November 9, 2012, Scheuer criticized what he called the Obama administration's deceit about the threat from Islamic militants, and misleading the American people in his first administration by claiming that the word "jihad" had nothing to do with military affairs, and that it had to do with "self reform and community improvement", which Scheuer claims was a blatant lie.
Scheuer has been critical of the Clinton and Bush administrations for not having killed bin Laden, for costly and disastrous policy missteps, and for not taking decisive measures to defend the country.
Richard A. Clarke and the Clinton administration, according to Scheuer, thwarted the CIA's ambitions to kidnap or kill bin Laden when they had the chance.
Although the "unprovoked attack of Iraq" will forever be remembered as "infamous", as will Dick Cheney's "reptilian contention that Americans who criticize U.S. foreign policy are 'validating the strategy of the terrorists'"; according to Scheuer, a "bipartisan governing elite", both Democratic and Republican, is to blame for the nation's woes.
[32] (Notwithstanding the bipartisan responsibility, Scheuer comments, "the thought of what history will say about Donald Rumsfeld's tenure at the Department of Defense ought to make his relatives shudder down to their latest generation.
Israel, according to Scheuer, has engaged in one of the most successful campaigns to influence public opinion in the United States ever conducted by a foreign government.
Slated to be the president-elect's chief of staff, Mr. Emanuel has labored as a volunteer for AIPAC's various anti-U.S. causes, strove to ensure the defeat of anti-Iraq War Democratic congressional candidates in 2006, and in 1991, as a 32-year-old U.S. citizen, chose to serve with the Israeli Defense Forces rather than volunteer to fight for the United States in the war against Saddam's Iraq.
"[41] His overall view is that the interests of U.S. foreign policy are far better served by the current status quo, whereby the existing autocratic regimes are better able to suppress the threat he perceives from Al-Qaeda incursion than Western-style democratic systems.
He said, "Dr. Paul's precise use of history and common sense exposes the exorbitantly costly effort to build democracies in the Islamic world for what it is; namely, Washington throwing money down the drain for a cause that is impossibly lost from the start and one that will involve us in wars where we have no interests.
"[47] Scheuer referred to Kyle Rittenhouse, who was charged with murder for shooting people demonstrating in George Floyd protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin a “young hero”, hoping that “Rittenhouse’s necessary, patriotic, and constitutional actions will power the formation of militias across the United States.”[46] In July 2020, he wrote that “loyal Americans know their domestic enemies, as well as their locations, in detail, and will be able to act swiftly to eliminate them and the threat they pose.”[46] In March 2018, Scheuer claimed that the European Union was in the process of "falling apart", saying that British Prime Minister Theresa May was "siding with the EU" during the future relation talks of the UK leaving the European Union.