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A review by rickwren
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
4.0
Where to begin? The research that went into the book is impressive - culling through thousands of documents, hundreds of interviews, reams of translations and an extensive array of contacts. Then to take that research and turn it into a compelling narrative was a masterful feat.
I was gripped by the story of Osama Bin Laden as a child, a student, an inept Mujaheddin, a father, and a religious spokesman. It was a story of how a fringe nut can bring together the disenfranchised and the left out members of a society to form a cause both horrific and spectacular. One can certainly argue that his aims are not good and that his methods are mad, but one cannot argue the effectiveness of his objectives or of his goals, which have certainly succeeded - to crush America economically, to make Americans afraid, and to do so despite America's overwhelming military might. Look around you - it's not a stretch to say his ambitions have met with quite a bit of success.
I was horrified at the lack of coordination and priority shown by the FBI, CIA, and NSA. It was bad and reflected poorly on the United States. This is supported by the fact that the 9/11 Hijackers succeeded despite the warning signs, intelligence, and tracking.
And this point remains foremost - if the intelligence gathered prior to 9/11 had been coordinated and acted upon, the tragedy could have been, and most likely would have been averted. What this means is that creating a huge governmental entity - Department of Homeland Security - adding a myriad of new travel obstacles, color-coding national threats, and drum-beating to multiple wars were never needed. All this has done has increased the debt, funneled money into corporate interests with security ties, raised the constant level of fear and stress, and sent a loud and clear message to the world that we can't handle adversity without overreacting in panic.
We could've destroyed Al Qada before it grew. We could've captured Bin Laden before he became an icon. We could've streamlined intelligence gathering and pin-pointed our response to be effective.
But we didn't. And now we have more government, military, bureaucracy and intrusion than we've ever had before.
The book is both scary and scary good. I recommend it to anyone attempting to understand how a small, poorly-funded fringe radical group could attack America so devastatingly as to change it's entire character.
I was gripped by the story of Osama Bin Laden as a child, a student, an inept Mujaheddin, a father, and a religious spokesman. It was a story of how a fringe nut can bring together the disenfranchised and the left out members of a society to form a cause both horrific and spectacular. One can certainly argue that his aims are not good and that his methods are mad, but one cannot argue the effectiveness of his objectives or of his goals, which have certainly succeeded - to crush America economically, to make Americans afraid, and to do so despite America's overwhelming military might. Look around you - it's not a stretch to say his ambitions have met with quite a bit of success.
I was horrified at the lack of coordination and priority shown by the FBI, CIA, and NSA. It was bad and reflected poorly on the United States. This is supported by the fact that the 9/11 Hijackers succeeded despite the warning signs, intelligence, and tracking.
And this point remains foremost - if the intelligence gathered prior to 9/11 had been coordinated and acted upon, the tragedy could have been, and most likely would have been averted. What this means is that creating a huge governmental entity - Department of Homeland Security - adding a myriad of new travel obstacles, color-coding national threats, and drum-beating to multiple wars were never needed. All this has done has increased the debt, funneled money into corporate interests with security ties, raised the constant level of fear and stress, and sent a loud and clear message to the world that we can't handle adversity without overreacting in panic.
We could've destroyed Al Qada before it grew. We could've captured Bin Laden before he became an icon. We could've streamlined intelligence gathering and pin-pointed our response to be effective.
But we didn't. And now we have more government, military, bureaucracy and intrusion than we've ever had before.
The book is both scary and scary good. I recommend it to anyone attempting to understand how a small, poorly-funded fringe radical group could attack America so devastatingly as to change it's entire character.