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

Rating: - 911 LOOMS OVER IRAQ
Technically, The Looming Tower has nothing to do with Iraq. It ends at 9/11. However, no other book on the subject illuminates so well the underpinnings of the complex terrorist movements that eventuate in a lucky but effective Al Qaeda. No other book documents so well the insularity, defensiveness, and ultimately the arrogance that leaves the United States so unprepared to deal with a Muslim based terror group. Wright builds his story like a police procedural. He examines the streams of influence that bring together former Afghan insurgents, Egyptian radicals, and Bin Laden himself into an uncomfortable federation that can barely find a home anywhere. He examines the motives and psychology of the players, not simply their religious and political aims. And he weaves the tale together into a fascinating narrative. On the other side, he shows how unwillingness to take the nascent movement seriously combines with thoughtless inertia to create an inability to understand Al Qaeda's threat when it could have been managed or even stopped. Wright also describes and analyzes how the "siloizaton" of the agencies in charge of the intelligence fed into policy and operational incompetence. As both stories begin to come together on the day of the flaming towers, as in a good procedural novel we are prepared for the ending and undestand how it inevitably came to be. The spate of books on the events that brought us from 9/11 to a manipulated war in Iraq all make more sense because of the framework established by The Looming Tower.

---

Rating: - Hard to put down
This book is a must read for anyone who wants to try and understand the basis for the current world terrorist movement. A great read with insights into many key people and events that led to 9/11.

---

Rating: - Excellent Work on the 9/11 Tragedy
The Looming Tower definitely deserved its Pulitzer Prize. I have read a few post 9/11 histories and some are better than others. Lawrence Wright has put together a very solid piece, with what was, for me, new information.

Wright does a great job of puling biographies of four men together to really paint a picture the evolution and eventual fact of the 9/11 disaster. He starts with Sayyid Qatb, a repressed Egyptian Muslim who is the philosophical underpinning of one of the key figures in 9/11, Ayman al-Zawahiri. He also does a great job of telling the life story Zawahiri, another repressed fanatic, who was tortured in jail after his organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, was involved in the assassination of Anwar Sadat for this secular government and repression of religious fanatics. And finally, John O'Neill, the obsessed playboy FBI agent who was the lead investigator in the Cole explosion and knew something big was going to happen with Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden.

This work is a crucifixion of the internecine warfare among American law enforcement and intelligence agencies tasked with protecting America with their turf warfare and lack of information sharing. It is beyond painfully clear that bureaucracy, jealously, and ineptitude not only contributed to 9/11, but ensured that it would happen. And it also paints a dim psychological portrait of the men behind the 9/11 attack and their perversion of the Muslim religion to suit their own warped worldview. The mostly subtle psychology of terrorism, at least terrorism among this group, is believable and frightening. Frightening because such previsions can be so successfully persuasive among those who would follow their lead.

This is a solid work on some of the background the root factors leading up the 9/11 and highly recommended.

---

Rating: - The definitive and chilling history of Al-Qaeda
Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Looming Tower is the best history of Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden that I have come across. Wright traces not just the history of the terrorist, but the fascinating if disturbing history of Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Middle East, where religion was more intimately linked with people's way of life than in any other nation in the world, and where a perception of the world engendered by old tribal customs and anti-Western attitudes fanned hate and extremism that was nonetheless seen by its practitioners to be essential to maintain their culture and religion- a point that has been sadly lost on Westerners. As CIA agent and bin Laden expert Michael Scheuer says, they don't attack the US because of "its freedoms". They attack the US because they see the US as interfering in their quintessential Islamic way of life, what they hold dearest, irrespective of whether it's justified or not. They are as much in love with Islam as any one ever was with any entity. That is what is frightening.

Wright traces the roots of extremism in the Middle East through Saudi Arabia's history, where extreme and primitive religious traditions juxtaposed strangely with immense wealth driven by exploration for oil. It was in this milieu, after World War 2 that Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri grew up and acquired a taste of jihad. Often lucidly Wright talks about the environment where they spent their childhoods, and brings the rustic Saudi Arabian landscape to life. Wright also talks about the enduring influence of Syed Qutb, the devout Egyptian religious scholar who was disturbed by what he perceived as the hedonistic coed culture of the United States, when he visited the country as an exchange scholar in the 1950s. It was his writings and his image as a martyr- Qutb was jailed and executed as an extremist in Egypt- that greatly inspired Bin Laden's and Al Zawahiri's calls for worldwide Jihad.

Wright also documents in considerable detail both Bin Laden's and Al-Zawahiri's transformation from educated, well-to-do moderates to extremist radicals in love with the Quran and martyrdom. Bin Laden's extremism was only set aflame during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Wright vividly describes the deadly brotherhood and romantic visions of martyrdom that bound the Jihadis together in that war-torn country. It only helped that Bin Laden had the money to draw followers and finance missions. After that, it was only natural and a small step before Bin Laden turned his already brainwashed and transformed psyche towards the US.

On this side of the Atlantic, Wright also narrates the urgent and often heartbreaking efforts of the few CIA and FBI agents who recognized Bin Laden's threat in the 90s, the marginalized Michael Scheuer among them. The central tragic figure in the book is John O'Neill, the brilliant, swaggering but restless and tormented FBI agent who was desperate to snare Bin Laden, often fighting tenaciously against the foot-dragging and bureaucracy in the government agencies. A man who never achieved satisfaction in life, O'Neill was a heavy drinker who lived with three women at the same time. After many failed attempts to capture Bin Laden and convince the administration to be more serious about the threat- a journey that along with some other dedicated FBI agents led him around the world from Africa to the Middle East- O'Neill finally had enough and took up a new position as head of security...at none other than the World Trade Center. O'Neill could have escaped in the initial attacks. But keeping with tradition, he decided to go inside the flaming towers to save others. The man who more than almost anyone else had been trying to catch or kill Bin Laden tragically perished inside the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Wright's book is a gripping treatment of an urgent subject. It demonstrates what fearsome power religion can summon, how it can completely transform the minds of men in the service of romanticized deadly causes, how blind ideology can have devastating and heartbreaking consequences. It shows us how the Middle East is largely and tragically still a land stuck in time, where irrational beliefs and tribal brotherhood can manifest in the most violent ways. The story of these gentle-looking, pious Jihadis is chlling by any standards. It is yet another illustration of the insidious nature of religious faith. It deserves to be read, and we all deserve to read it and think about what we can do to stop such fanaticism. The leader of the United States is not even close when he says that the men of Al Qaeda are cowards and fanatics. They are anything but that; they are cold, calculating, determined men who have dedicated their lives to what they see as the most just cause in their lives. They need to be stopped at any cost, and understanding where they come from will be the first step in trying to do that.

---

Rating: - Wow
This book is fascinating. It personalizes the history of 9/11, taking us into the mind and culture of those who founded it, and those who laid down the philosophy before it. It is a gripping read, highly factual, but written in a way that pulls you in to the story and gives you breadth about the characters, and the evolution towards increased bloodshed and the incompetence of the American bureaucracy in dealing with it. This book should be read. Don't just listen to my review... press the buy button and read it yourself. It is worth it.