9/11: A vital and highly readable explanation of what it all means

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	• The Looming Tower: Al-qaeda and the Road to 9/11 Lawrence Wright Thorndike Press, 2007 - 873 pages average customer review:based on 283 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The History of 9/11

In this superbly written book, Lawrence Wright tackles the still controversial subject of how 9/11 happened tact and aplomb. Rather than appealing to extremists on any side of the debate, Wright provides a remarkably in-depth history of how al-Qaeda came into being, and of U.S. policies during and after the Afghan war to kick out the Soviets.

On the al-Qaeda side of the story, Wright begins with the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb and very clearly traces the evolution of militant Islam all the way up to bin Laden and Zawahiri. Qutb's impact on figures like Zawahiri and other Islamists cannot be underestimated, so it is to Wright's credit that he includes a chapter on Qutb. Wright also provides a detailed account of bin Laden's history, from his days in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Sudan. Included in this account, Wright reveals that at one point, bin Laden actually suggested an alliance with Shi'ite Muslims to fight the Soviets. Another interesting bit of information found in the book is the meetings between the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda during the late 1990s, and the Iraqi offer to relocate al-Qaeda to Iraq.

Wright also explains 9/11 from the American failure to stop it. This story primarily involves the lack of communication among the CIA, FBI, and NSA. It's no less than chilling to see just how many times 9/11 might have been prevented had it not been for the turf wars between these agencies. If bin Laden is the main antagonist of this story, FBI agent John O'Neil. Even though I consider myself well-read on the subject, I had never heard of O'Neil before. He spent the last decade of his career trying to get bin Laden, and then tragically died trying to rescue people from the World Trade Center.

I've read many fantastic books over the past five years that deal with the U.S. and the Middle East, but Wright's book is really close to the top of my list. I would recommend this book to just about anyone, regardless of their prior knowledge. I think the book's greatest strength is that Wright managed to take an enormously complex subject and make it accessible to the general public, who is still woefully ignorant about American foreign policy and the Middle East in general.

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A must read to better understand our times.

An excellent book regarding Al-Qaeda and its leaders. Here you will find what the goals are and what the funding ideas behind this organization, what the cultural background and what the deep, profund origins of this terrorist nihilist organization are. Many interesting and dramatic pages regard the unacceptable and irresponsible ideological and burocratic barriers that kept CIA and FBI from identifying and isolating the terrorists while they were in the US territory before 9/11. The personal stories of strong characters with steel personalities such as John o'neill and Mike Schauer are also told. Above all the most striking and appalling feature that comes out is how, once again in history, some influencial individuals distorted the original religious message and warped to a point that it became a message of death, suicide, suffering in name of a delirious and insane goal. A must read to understand our present.

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9/11: A vital and highly readable explanation of what it all means

Trying to make sense of momentous events in our history, like those of September 11th 2001, can seem like standing too close to a very large painting. As the years pass we step away and some of the confusion of shapes and colours slowly starts to take focus. Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer Prize winning book is not the first but quite surely the finest attempt to try and provide some depth and understanding to that blur of incomprehensibility.
This is not a book that lingers on the detailed plans or plotting of the 9/11 hijackers or indeed the horrors of the actual day. Those events are covered elsewhere both in book and on celluloid. Instead The Looming Tower takes us on a 60 year journey and paints with a much wider brush the origins and motivations of Al- Qaeda. However this is more than a history book. Wright entwines together the contrasting and diverse lives of the ubiquitous Osama Bin Laden and the unheralded FBI agent John O'Neill as the narrative unfolds towards the inevitable conclusion. Instead it reads like a page turning thriller.
I learnt much and my mind was opened in unexpected ways. The deep roots of the Islamic fundamentalist tradition in Egypt, the antipathy of the movement to secular Islamists like Nasser and Sadat and the oil transformation of Saudi Arabia which helped create an alternative radical movement within the kingdom are all explored. The irrelevance of Iraq to the main game of the war on terror is made obvious; this is not a book you would find on George W's bedside table. But the best parts of the book are those which deal with Osama Bin Laden himself and his extended family. The familiarity of his name and the countless Bin Laden type jokes have numbed our ability to understand who he is and where he came from.
John O'Neill, the FBI agent, is the perfect foil for Bin Laden. This womanising charmer of Irish catholic traditions, so full of inconsistencies and flaws, at times almost single handedly represented the growing concerns about Al - Qaeda operations. How deeply ironic that he should die in the World Trade Center buildings just 1 month after taking up his new post as head of security. The breathtaking incompetency (as well as plain bad luck) of the US security organisations is revealed. Their failure to act together because of petty jealousies and human flaws is the subplot to the larger story.
The book is well illustrated with maps, photographs and a helpful glossary of characters (which I discovered all too late at the end). The latter is most helpful because the Islamic names can be confusing and difficult to remember. Possibly Wright's greatest achievement is to remain fair and unbiased. As an award winning journalist with the New Yorker he is interested in facts not in grinding an axe.
I strongly recommend this book to anybody who wants to begin to understand the world in which we find ourselves post 9/11.

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Great insight into Al-Qaeda and 9/11

This is a great book for anyone wondering where Al-Qaeda came from and the events that brought us to such a terrible attack on U.S. soil. Great narrative of the early days of radical Islam as well as the events that lead to 9-11. Insight given on the CIA and U.S. side as well as the Al-Qaeda side.

I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in the history of Al-Qaeda and a recent historical look at how this whole mess we are in today came about.

THE book to read if you ever want to know why 9/11 happened

I like to read a lot. I owned the hard copy version of The Looming Tower and because I have well over 500 other books on my shelves, hadn't gotten around to reading it. Then I downloaded the iPod audiobook version which ended up grasping me totally. Finally I bought a Kindle and The Looming Tower now resides there as well.

The book is an incredible story of 9/11 and those who made, and let it happen as well as those who tried as hard as they could to prevent it. One of the latter was an FBI agent who is as complex a character as full of flaws as a human can be but if there is a hero in this book, it's him -warts and all. He was killed on 9/11 trying to save people in the WTC.

Why is this book so good? Because it really delves into the mind set of those who made it happen from bin Laden and his henchmen, to a certifiable "nut case", a Sayyid Qutb whose repressed sexuality and heavens knows what else drove him to father the current version of Islamic fundamentalism. It's easy to realize what sort of sociopaths are drawn to this belief system, but America has its own nut case fundamental religious zealots be they Jewish or Protestant. They range from harmless "speaking in tongues" types and rattle snake handlers to "W", who is as motivated by religious fundamentalism as is bin Laden.

"W" has at least permitted and encouraged wiretapping and torture to deal with the violent brand of Arab crazies who wish a lot worse than 9/11 on us. It may seem out of line to those shuddering in horror at our loss of liberty, but so far there are no more 9/11s in the USA.

I was born in 1938 and remember WW2 [barely] but know enough history to know that when you are at war, you should spare no effort in totally destroying the enemy as we did in WW2 with the Japanese and Germans.

After spending 20 years in the military, I only became more convinced that war should occur only if you mean business. Bringing "democracy" to Iraq is a sick joke. "W" should have watched Lawrence of Arabia and maybe he might have gotten a clue of the inevitable morass that awaited those stuck in the tar of Iraq. In WW2 we weren't worried about locking up presumably innocent Japanese, or censorship of all letters from our soldiers. All this under a president who many Americans considered the political equivalent of Stalin, or the equivalent of a socialist's greatest hope. Today the liberals are still worrying about the loss of freedoms, but freedoms can return AFTER the war. Whether they will is another story. The fault with our current miasma of political manure lies with us citizens. What we see in Congress, not to mention the executive and judicial branches merely reflect America's citizens own lack of care, education and hedonism.

But I digress. The Looming Tower is an incredible "morality tale" and Greek tragedy wrapped up in one. Hubris abounds, those idiots responsible for the debacle are named, although it is apparent that none suffered career reversals for their poor performance with the exception of the two people who saw it coming and couldn't stop it - FBI agent O'Neill and Richard Clarke. Clarke was smeared by Bush gunsels from Limbaugh to other White House staff thugs who fear the truth as a vampire fears sunlight. Condoleza Rice is shown as witless and also very much responsible for 9/11 because when presented with reality she couldn't think clearly or was driven by political expediency to the wrong decision - i.e. ignoring the threat.

The book is NOT a hatchet job on anybody. You get to see all the characters responsible on both sides and there is little to no judgmental criticism. As Det. Friday used to say on Dragnet, for those of you ancient enough to remember him, "Just the facts, M'am. Just the facts."

Much as I hate to swallow my atavistic tendencies to dismiss the likes of bin Laden and his cronies as crazy "rag heads", you will understand the character attributes that made his hellish plans come to fruition, and they certainly did not start with 9/11. I can only wish we had the likes of him to conduct our own war on the terrorists, although fortunately Cheney comes close.

Read this book. You can only grow wiser and sadder from the experience.

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