Books : The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

Rating: - Awesome
I wanted to respond to the reviewer who said the Bin Laden of the book wouldn't have denied the 9/11 bombings right after they happened. Remember, he does say in the book that Bin Laden denied the bombings of the East African embassies right after they happened. So I don't think the argument that Wright carefully omitted facts to make Bin Laden into a stock movie villain holds much water. In fact, Hollywood would never dare offer the portrait Wright offers. Bin Laden is far from a cartoonish villian in this book. In fact, the most startling parts are the descriptions of him with his family, friends, etc. Or the episode where he changed his mind about going to Yemen as a teenager when his mother cried about him leaving Saudi Arabia. Also, a cartoonish villain would not have been portrayed as mostly a joke in the Afghan war against the Soviets. Or, far from the stock evil genius of Hollywood, Wright includes this depiction by his young friend from Sudan: "I loved that man by that time because of so many ideas I see in him. There was no hypocrisy in his character. No divergence between what he says and what he does. Unfortunately, his IQ was not that great". This Osama is as much a Don Quixote as a Genghis Khan--a (perhaps) well meaning guy not smart enough to see through his own corruption of the true and pure Islam he thought he was protecting.

This is the most 3 dimensional view of Bin Laden that I'm aware of--and that's what made this book so spellbinding. The bad guys aren't all good and the good guys aren't all good--i.e.: John O'Neill is shown as a tad shady.

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Rating: - An Eye Opening Account of the Events That Led to the 9/11 Attacks
Lawrence Wright's "The Looming Tower" is a richly detailed account of the people and events that led to the World Trade Center attacks on September 11 2001. Wright provides insight into the philosophy that drove the al-Qaeda and towards its extremist charter.
The book also starkly lays bare the inept handling of intelligence by the CIA, poor decisions that let the al-Qaeda get away with missteps in its planning and execution.

I do feel the book could have benefited from a study of the 9/11 hijackers themselves - it focuses mostly on the al-Qaeda's founders and management and not sufficiently on the men who actually carried out the attacks. Perhaps in a later book?

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Rating: - MUST READ BOOK!
If you ever wanted to better understand where and how modern terrorism all started and how it links to the two embassy bombings in Africa, the USS COLE bombing in Yemen, the 1st WTC bombing and finally to 9/11/01, this book very clearly explains the linkages, the people, organizations and the histories & ideologies of all the players. It also follows the people were working to prevent 9/11 and the obstacles and frustrations they encountered each step of the way. This book was impossible to put down from the very first page to the final chapter. A great read.

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Rating: - An Informative, Devastating, Essential Book
It's encouraging that this is the #1 book on the topic of 9/11 in Amazon. It deserves to be. Not content with depicting the terrible events of 9/11, Wright brilliantly and logically draws out the origins of the nihilist religious movement that formed the ideological motor of 9/11. The roots of 9/11 are twofold: in the writings of Egyptian expatriate Sayyid Qutb, who ironically wrote his most inflammatory works while an academic guest in Colorado (some of Qutb's works form the Mein Kampf of Islamic extremism); and the toxic Wahhabi Muslim sect in Saudi Arabia. When you finish the chapters on these topics, you will thoroughly understand the repellent underpinnings of Saudi-specific culture, which in fact have very little to do with the humane face of Islam.

Obviously, the central figure in this book is Osama Bin Laden, and you will also find yourself knowing more than perhaps you really wanted to know about this unusually prolific mass-murderer. In Qutb's and Bin Laden's world, the deaths of innocent Muslims are of no more value than blowing your nose in a Kleenex.

The ultimate issue exposed beyond debate in this book is the calamitous incompetence of the CIA, coupled with the hidebound bureaucratic stupidity pervading all levels of the FBI, with its institutional rigidity and lack of acceptance of technology. The lion's share of the blame for the failure of the United States to forestall the attacks really has to be laid at the doors of President Bill Clinton and his CIA directors, who were responsible for the policies disallowing the CIA from sharing any intelligence information whatever with law enforcement authorities inside the US. Secondary blame has to be laid at the door of the Bush Administration, who had ample warning of impending attacks and had absolutely no interest in proceeding even with the lamentably weak anti-terrorism policies of the Clinton administration.

But, ultimately, as I've noted, the CIA is really to blame as an institution for allowing the 9/11 attacks to succeed. It leaves an indelible impression of decadence and decline in America, and that particular institution should be disbanded and those CIA functionaries who did not share vital information with the FBI really should be thrown in prison for the rest of their lives, starting with ex-Director Tenet. There is no excuse for such meretricious incompetence. Absolutely none. My fondest hope is that one or two of the people mentioned in the book as having committed these acts of arrogant stupidity will read these words or those of others on this page. These CIA people have as much blood on their hands as Bin Laden, as far as I'm concerned.

Can you tell I'm really, really angry with these people? You will be too, by the time you finish reading this book. The final chapter, "The Big Wedding," painstakingly describes the attack on the USS Cole and its aftermath, and clearly draws a direct line between that attack and the one that single-handedly (and ironically) ensured George Bush a second term. The book climaxes with a strikingly brief but utterly visual and devastating real-time narrative of the attacks as the ex-FBI man John O'Neill (another central figure in the book, who reminds me strongly of Tony Soprano if Soprano was a big-time FBI man) experienced them. This book will be read and discussed a century and more from now. It is an essential work of our time.

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Rating: - A brilliant book about an essential topic
Looming Tower should be required reading for all Americans. It is by far the best book about Al Qaeda and its antecedents. While it is extremely comprehensive, it is never boring. I find it extraordinary how Wright was able to develop such a book so soon after 9/11. It reads more like a book written 20 years after the fact rather than just 5 years.

Wright is particularly good at "developing the characters of his story." In this it reads more like a great novel, rather than a typical non-fiction book. Wright creates fascinating portraits of Sayyid Qtub (the intellectual founder of modern Jihadism), Abdullah Azzam (the cleric who gave a fatwa calling on all Muslims to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, Ayman Al Zawahiri (the intellectual and organizational founder of Al Qaeda) and finally Osama Bin Laden (the financier and symbolic leader of Jihad), Jamal Al-Fadl (the defector who first told the incredulous FBI of the existence of the Al Qaeda), Ali Mohammed (who infiltrated the US Special Forces, copied their manuals and started the How to wage jihad encyclopedia).

Particularly interesting is how all of these radical leaders came from the upper-crust of Arab societies. One might expect that their anger and violent rhetoric came from very poor people, but that is not the case.

Also interesting is how Al Qaeda's strategy and organization gradually evolved out of a serious of historical accidents - the visit of Qtub to the USA; the imprisonment of Zawahiri after Sadat's assassination; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; Zawahiri's work in a Kuwaiti hospital with radical Jihadi doctors; the near destruction of infant Al Qaeda in one small skirmish with the Soviet army; squabbles within Al Qaeda after the Soviets withdrew resulting in the assassination of Assam; the inability of the Arabs to return to their country after the war due to government hostility against the very people they recruited; the coup in Sudan which gave Al Qaeada a base just when they were losing their old one in Afghanistan; the USA passing up Sudan's offer to extradite bin Laden due to lack of evidence to prosecute him.

Wright also dismantles the myth that Al Qaeda brought down the Soviet Union by destroying their army in Afghanistan. This is a foundational myth for Al Qaeda and key to understand their seemingly irrational desire to attack the USA. Wright shows that only a few hundred Arab troops were actually in combat, and they did so mostly after the Soviets started withdrawing. Arab troops did not come in large numbers until after the Soviets completely withdrew, and they spent most of their time fighting against Afghan Muslims and each other. Even by the end of the war, the organization was just one of dozens of almost irrelevant radical organizations.

Wright somehow manages to maintain an objective perspective despite the murderous rhetoric, thoughts and action of his subjects.