Speaking at The Daily Telegraph-sponsored Hay Festival, Michael Scheuer said western politicians had to accept that the conflict in the Middle East was caused by US foreign policy.
Mr Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit said that the terrorist and organisations such as al-Qaeda were fighting a war against US imperialism rather than a war on western culture.
''American politicians, and I'm afraid listening to Mr Cameron this week, there's not a clue about what's going down in the western world,'' he told the festival.
''They can't cope with the fact that it's nothing to do with the way we live. It doesn't have anything to do with elections or democracy or liberty.
''We are being attacked in the west and we will continue to be attacked in the west as long as we are in Afghanistan, as long as we support the Israelis, as long as we protect the Saudi police state."
He added: "There is almost no Muslim out there who is an insane character who is going to blow himself up because my daughters go to university.
''What I try and show in my book is that there is no discussion by bin Laden of this cultural war that is supposed to be waged against us.
''A president who was a statesman and a politician might say something like 'I'm sorry we've been kinda lying to you for 30 years and why we are being attacked is until recently we were supporting fascism across the Middle East'."
He continued: ''In the rhetoric of our enemies there is very little, if anything, about attacking us for how we live or how we think or how we act in our own country.
''It is about intervention, it is about being in the Arab Peninsula and it has nothing to do with these cultural things.
''We are the ones that are arranging the cultural war against them. What we will see as al Qaida evolves is that the next generation is better educated, combat experienced and probably much crueller.''
Mr Scheuer said the only way to end the war on terror was to withdraw from the Middle East to an extent that is ''consistent with our interests''.
He added: ''The American relationship with Israel, in my mind, is a useless and unnecessary relationship.
''As long as we are playing a role we are the recruiting sergeant for the people that are going to kill us.''
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