A few weeks ago when I read the list of the NY Times’s Top 10 books of 2006, one in particular stood out. I’d read Lawrence Wright’s excellent In the New World years ago. So I ordered The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
and was not disappointed.
I now feel like I have a much better understanding of Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, of the source of their hatred, and of the fertile ground for their recruitment.
This is an exhaustive book. I kept wondering, How many interviews did this Austin writer actually have?
It’s the carefully woven story of why, in 1996 from a cave in Afghanistan (after being shoved out of Sudan), Bin Laden declared war on the United States. He and many Islamic fundamentalists were furious that five years after the invasion of Kuwait, U.S. troops were still stationed in the land of Mohammed, the prophet of Islam. “Saudis were mortified by the need to turn to Christians and Jews to defend the holy land of Islam. That many of these foreign soldiers were women only added to their embarrassment.”
Mohammed bin Laden fathered 54 children by 22 wives. At least, officially. “The total number of wives he procured is impossible to determine, since he would often ‘marry’ in the afternoon and divorce that night. An assistant followed behind to take care of any children he might have left in his wake.”
Osama bin Laden was the seventeenth son of this wealthy, hard-working construction mogul. His mother had been taken to be one of Mohammed bin Laden’s wives when she was fourteen.
Osama was a fan of westerns, especially Bonanza. “Although he was opposed to the playing of musical instruments [I KID YOU NOT], he organized some of his friends into an a cappella singing group.”
“He was rarely angry except when sexual matters came up. When he thought one of his half brothers was flirting with a maid, Osama slapped him. Another time, when he was in a cafe in Beirut, one of his brother’s friends produced a porno magazine. Osama made it clear that neither he nor any of his brothers would ever have anything to do with the boy again. There seems never to have been a moment in his entire life when he gave way to the sins of the flesh, venal or ribald behavior, the temptations of liquor, smoking, or gambling. Food held little interest for him. He loved adventure and poetry and little else but God.”
Throughout, in addition to the story of bin Laden and other extremists, there are the stories of U.S. involvement in Islamic countries: in Afghanistan (where we supported the resistance against the Russians — the same resistance that wound up hosting al-Qaeda), in Kuwait, in Iran, in Iraq, in Israel, in Sudan, in Somalia. While mistakes by the U.S. government are exposed (including grudges between the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. that resulted in the withholding of incredibly important information leading up to 9/11), this is not a revisionist book that seeks to blame Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, or America for all the evil!
Some insightful words just to whet your appetite:
“Radicalism usually prospers in the gap between rising expectations and declining opportunities. This is especially true where the population is young, idle, and bored; where the art is impoverished; where entertainment — movies, theater, music — is policed or absent altogether; and where young men are set apart from the consoling and socializing presence of women.”
“Few countries in the world were so different from each other, and yet so dependent on one another, as America and Saudi Arabia. . . . In 1970 the United States was the tenth greatest importer of Saudi oil; a decade later, it was number one.”
“In 1990 bin Laden warned of the danger that the murderous tyrant in Iraq, Saddam Hussein, posed to Saudi Arabia. . . . Much of the Arab world was elated by Saddam’s anti-Western rhetoric and his threats to ‘burn half of Israel’ with chemical weapons. He was especially popular in Saudi Arabia, which maintained cordial relations with its northern neighbor. Nonetheless, bin Laden continued his lonely campaign against Saddam and his secular Baath Party.”
“For bin Laden, the cave was the last pure place. Only by retreating from society — and from time, history, modernity, corruption, the smothering West — could he presume to speak for the true religion.”
“The radical Islamist movement has never had a clear idea of governing, or even much interest in it, as the Taliban would conclusively demonstrate. Purification was the goal; and whenever purity is paramount, terror is close at hand.”
The section on al-Qaeda training is particularly frightening. Recruits are engrained with the three main goals: (1) establishing the rule of God on Earth; (2) attaining martyrdom in the cause of God; (3) purification of the ranks of Islam from the elements of depravity. They are taught to hate “the enemies of Islam”: (1) heretics; (2) Shiites; (3) America; and (4) Israel. They often gather in the evenings to watch Arnold Schwarzenegger movies (again, I kid you not), looking for tips about violence. “What the recruits tended to have in common — besides their urbanity, their cosmopolitan backgrounds, their education, their facility with languages, and their computer skills — was displacement.”
I highly recommend this book if you, too, are curious about bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and Islam (including the centuries-old conflicts between the Shiites and the Sunnis).
There are so many other parts I haven’t even mentioned. As one blurb on the book cover says, “The portrait of John O-Neill, the driven, demon-ridden F.B.I. agent who worked so frantically to stop Osama bin Laden, only to perish in the attack on the World Trade Center, is worth the price of the book alone.”
— a review written by