Based on some of the interviews with Imperial Hubris author Anonymous (CIA officer Michael Scheuer, as we've revealed) over the past couple of weeks, it's hard to avoid concluding that Scheuer is not spoiling for a crusade of bloody constraint against the Islamic and Arab worlds. He recently told NPR that "I'm not, you know, a warmonger." Still, phrases from the book like "killing in large numbers is not enough to defeat our Muslim foes" and "proceed ... until we have annihilated the Islamists who threaten us," suggest otherwise to many.

Scheuer's fits of bellicosity are best understood in context, so here's a brief summation of the book.

On one level, Imperial Hubris is likely to confound everyone and satisfy no one, given Scheuer's heterodox analytical style. Neocons, for example, will doubtless be warmed by his occasional veneration of Bernard Lewis, Samuel Huntington, Victor Davis Hanson, and others. They won't be at all happy, however, about how he parses neocons and their philosophy as a whole, subjecting them — along with just about everyone else across the political spectrum — to withering criticism where deserved.

Indeed, Scheuer blasts most elite experts, whatever their political or philosophical persuasion, for "a process of interpreting the world so it makes sense to us, a process yielding a world in which few events seem alien because we Americanize their components." Ultimately, "ignorance of their own and world history, failure to appreciate the power of faith, and disdain for the views and analyses of idiosyncratic American and non-Westerners" begets a particularly perilous imperialism.

While much of Imperial Hubris isn't necessarily polemical, it does lead to a provocative conclusion. One thrust of the book is that at least three decades of US foreign policy fed what has become an intractable worldwide defensive Islamist insurgency, whose violent strain is performing what it considers a jihad in defense of Islam — necessary because, as bin Laden professes, Muslims have failed to demonstrate adequately their love for Islam and one another. In Scheuer's view, because the American public seems either unwilling or unable to hold an honest debate about the wisdom of certain US policies, the insurgency will perpetuate and multiply.

Scheuer's take on the matter — certainly debatable in and of itself — is intended not so much to champion total war, but to prompt discussion. At the end of the book, Scheuer offers up a handful of what he casts not as policy suggestions but "guidelines" — some over-the-top and ill-considered — whose utility lies not necessarily in literal application, but in reinvigorating a much-needed national dialogue.

"The rhetorical frameworks and public acrimony from such a debate would greatly stimulate thoughtful policy re-evaluation by Americans," he writes, and arguing further that this would "allow Americans to know what they are signing up for: a policy status quo that will guarantee broadening conflict with escalating human and economic expense, or new policies that have potential over time for a less confrontational and bloody relationship with Islam."

Or, as Scheuer put it in an interview with the Phoenix last Friday morning, though he doubts that any form of diplomacy is likely to make for a better world vis-à-vis the "War on Terror," his call for a purely militaristic approach is premised on the idea that current US policies won't change. "It's less about advocacy," he said, "than provocation for debate."

Jason Vest is a senior correspondent for The American Prospect and a contributor to Boston Phoenix, in which this article originally appeared. He lives in eastern Monroe County.