If you read nothing else this year,please go to your library or bookstore and obtain a copy of Lawrence Wright's compelling and scrupulously researched book : The Looming Tower - Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 .
Wright strips away the media-enhanced "personas" of Osama bin Laden , Ayman al Zawahiri ,Mullah Omar, Abu Hafs al Masri , the effeminate Mohammed Atta , and others to reveal what lies beneath - and it's not a pretty picture.
The "Mickey Moore Club" will probably be infuriated to learn that Osama-though possibly diabetic-was in good health, otherwise. Definitely not on dialysis, he is/was an excellent horseman. The "9/11 Truthers" should (but probably won't) be dismayed to learn he was a trained, experienced engineer, and that he calculated the effect of burning jet fuel on structural steel while planning the 9/11 attacks.
You'll learn the people who formed the "grab bag" we call al-Qaeda were not motivated by poverty or the usual excuses. They had become convinced - after Israel resisted a series of multi-national strikes - that God was no longer on the side of the Muslim people, because their religion had become "impure"; and that God wanted all Muslims to return to the pure fundamentalism of the Prophet's day.
Governments - everywhere - were to be overthrown , and replaced by Sharia counsels, administering ancient Islamic tribal law.
In time,these fundamentalists drifted into the heresy (in Muslim terms) of Takfir - which gets around the prohibition against Muslims killing fellow Muslims by declaring anyone who opposes them to be "apostates" : whether the opposition be governments, or innocent men, women, and children. Takfir permits those who enjoy killing to do so with the "religious blessing" of equally psychopathic council members (and would seem to be very much in operation in Iraq today !)
In addition to detailing the backgrounds of some of the more notable conspirators, the author brings to light some of the more egregious errors on the part of the CIA - which repeatedly and obstinately witheld information some of the 9/11 hijackers were on American soil (apparently because it didn't want to lose control of its poorly-handled investigation to the FBI ) ; and the FBI - which repeatedly declined to investigate alarming information , and which - after getting belated information dangerous people were in the country , detailed one agent-just out of the academy-to find them !
Those looking for "ammunition" to use against the Clinton or the Bush administration-or to advance a political crusade- are probably going to come up short : a circumstance I was grateful for. (I've read far too many slanted accounts by political opinion-makers from both sides of the aisle, thank you !)
If, on the other hand, you are genuinely interested in learning what the United States (and much of the Western world) is up against - and is likely to be up against no matter who is elected - take the time to read this book !
Comments