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Summary: Intro to understanding bin Laden
Review: Provides an interesting overview to bin laden's background, including his family and early development as a terrorist leader.
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Summary: Readable journalistic overview
Review: If you don't know the difference between al-Qaeda and the Taliban (and before September 11 ‛01, I sure did not) or if you're a little fuzzy about where Yemen is in relation to Afghanistan, this an excellent book. Peter Bergen is CNN's terrorism analyst and an experienced reporter. He uses a wide range of sources including his own experience to describe the al-Qaeda terrorist organization. There's even a map of the Middle East that you can refer to as you read.But those with some expertise in the world of the mindless jihad masters and the issuance of pretentious fatwas will find this rather limited, I would imagine. We don't really get "Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden," but rather are provided with a narrative distilled from numerous news accounts augmented with Bergen's interviews and travel experiences. Essentially, we stay outside the organization (but so did the CIA). Furthermore, Bergen's "Holy War, Inc." characterization of al-Qaeda as a kind of multinational corporation is exactly the sort of catchy, but superficial and misleading designation that irritates the cognoscenti. Al-Qaeda does not turn a profit, nor does it look to turn a profit. It exists on funds raised from charities, from donations from Muslim fat cat businessmen, from bin Laden's inheritance and from funds siphoned from various commercial enterprises, both legal and illegal, and from what it can beg, borrow and steal. It would perhaps be more accurate to designate al-Qaeda as a Mephistophelian service organization. Perhaps "The Black Crescent" would be an appropriate agnomen. Nonetheless, to Bergen's credit this is not the usual sort of "rush to judgment" volume churned out by book publishers to take advantage of a major news event. Bergen had the book finished in August and apparently was working on the proofs when the planes crashed into the World Trade Center buildings on September 11. At that point of course the book was reshaped and spun to tie in with that event so that Bergen's interview with bin Laden (aired on CNN May 10, 1997) forms part of a Prologue entitled, "How to Find the World's Most Wanted Man." The strength of the book is in its readability and in the sense that Bergen gives us of what it is like to be an international journalist today (and for those out in the field, it is dangerous to be sure). Characteristically, Bergen describes his trek to and into Afghanistan including the wearing of blindfolds during the last leg to bin Laden's hideout. This personal experience view continues throughout the book and is one of the book's strengths--although of course Bergen does want to make sure we understand that he is more than a "put on the make up and read the cue cards" sort of journalist. What Bergen notices, and what he reports to us, tell us as much about Bergen as about the world of the terrorist. He reports on the food and what the taxi drivers say. He notices the terrain, the weapons, the dress of the men he meets, and he gives us a good feel for the conditions he and other journalists encounter. What is missing, at least from my point of view, is a cohesive overall understanding or perspective. Perhaps the events are so new, and the trees of the forest so mesmerizingly vivid that it is impossible as yet to discern the larger picture. But Bergen does attempt a larger understanding. He compares al-Qaeda to the infamous Assassins, founded as an Ismailian sect in what was then Persia in 1090. Supposedly under the influence of hashish, the Assassins brought death and destruction on Christian Crusaders for upwards of two hundred years. (It remains to be seen how long al-Qaeda lasts.) I found it revealing to learn that the head of the Assassins was referred to as "the old man of the mountain" (according to Webster's Second International), just the sort of personage that bin Laden would idolize and try to emulate. Bergen also attempts a little political philosophy by critiquing Harvard professor Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" thesis in the Afterward, but not very successfully, I might say, since the tribal and fundamentalist world view of the Taliban and al-Qaeda supporters really is in a monumental collision with Western modernity. Bottom line: this is a good book, a little superficial and a little thin, but then, so's the news.
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Summary: realistic and interesting.
Review: This book may look boring but after you read the first page, you just can't put it down. The author is wonderful in his ability to make this book so feel realistic in ways he describes stories of him being in Afghanistan. The Holy War takes you inside the world of Bin Laden it gives information on how and why the Jihad religion exists today. It also tells who are the real terrorists and why the Middle East people keep terrorizing the U.S. The book has good content and the stories are good, but what was not good was when I read that the Middle East people will keep on practicing Jihad even when their leader is gone. This religion should be forgotten because it just favors one group of people, and says that all other people should be destroyed.
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Summary: Great Book Alot of information put out
Review: This book had alot of information about the al-queda and taliban terrorist networks. answeered alot of my questions. and for once tell you the truth on osama bin laden. Is amazing that he use our own weapons against. well most coutry does that anyway. Whoever wants to know mor about our new war on terrorism, this is a must read then.
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Summary: What every American needs to know
Review: The famous sentiment "know thy enemy" cannot be more true in today's world, when how well you know your enemy can mean the difference between life and death. "Holy War Inc." is a great starting point for anybody wishing know more about American enemy #1 (at the moment), Osama bin Laden. Peter Bergen paints an exhaustive potrait of the man and the organization behind the Septemeber 11 attacks. If only he could have published this book sooner. While reading the book, I grew angry not only at the actions of al-Qaeda, but of our own government for not knowing what was going on. At the end I thought, "Didn't they see Sept. 11 coming??" The attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon wasn't the first time we had an encounter with bin Laden's cronies: there was the bombing of the Trade Center in 1993, the bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. Following the embassy bombings, Clinton implemented military attacks against al-Qaeda, but as the book points out, they were totally fruitless. It seems the U.S. was more concerned about Monica Lewinsky than Osama bin Laden. It just astounded me that while we were so wrapped up in trivial matters like Bill Clinton's sex life and O.J. Simpson, a group of seeminly rag-tag militants were systematically plotting the greatest attack on American soil. The book portrays al-Qaeda as smart, resourceful, and calculating (if not totally crazy in their philosophies and actions) and the U.S. government as almost utterly clueless. It made me angry. What are those folks down at the CIA doing anyway? I would love to see Peter Bergen write a sequal to "Holy War Inc." A LOT has changed since this book was published--the military retaliation by the U.S. and its allies, the collapse of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the establishment of a moderate interim government, the disappearance (and possible death) of Osama bin Laden, etc. It's certainly a different world now, and hopefully for the better.
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Summary: Good Starting Point
Review: This is one of the many books that have come out over the past five years talking about Osama and it is not a bad attempt to bring a shadowy figure more into the light. This is a good book if you are looking for the straight story of Osama bin Laden and his band of merry martyrs. The author is the CCN "expert" on this group and to be fair he does seem to have a very good handle on the subject. He has personally met most of the higher ups, and has been to all the hot spots that they call home across the Middle East. He put together a good book that tells the story of how Al Qaeda has come from a group of Afghanistan freedom fighters to the global version of Murder Inc. He also interviewed the guy, which can not be said by many. One of my favorite parts of the book was the interesting story of the interview, how he got here and the demeanor of Osama. ...The editing was not all that great but the author does apologize for that due to the rush to get the book out. I also did get bogged down in the names, some kind of organization chart would have been helpful. Overall it is a good review of the topic and one that I am sure many Americans will want to read. If you want a more detailed account of how the U.S. aid to the Afghanistan Freedom fighters worked the I would suggest the book "Bear Trap", it does a good job of discussing how the process worked. The Book "Unholy Wars" is also a very detailed look at this particular aspect of the Al Qaeda - U.S. link plus more detail on the group as a whole.
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Summary: Holy War, Inc.
Review: Peter Bergen's aptly titled book "Holy War, Inc", draws a stunning portrait of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization. He depicts al-Qaeda as a multi-national terrorist network, with members everywhere from Egypt and the Philippines to Disney World and the suburbs of London. Bergen takes the reader on a fast-paced journey around the world to try to understand the minds of these Islamic militants.
Bergen's first contention is that Osama bin Laden is grossly misunderstood by the West. Bergen begins by dispelling various rumors circulating around bin Laden. For instance, it was falsely speculated that bin Laden received an engineering degree from an American University, teamed up with Iraq to plot the 1998 African embassy bombings, and was receiving funds from the CIA. The first step Bergen, a journalist by profession, takes to give the reader a clear understanding of bin Laden is to lay out the factual aspects of bin Laden's life.
Bergen argues that it was misunderstanding that led to, what he deems as, countless blunders in U.S. foreign policy, especially the actions of the CIA, with regard to the Muslim world in the 1980s. He does not go as far as to claim that the CIA "created" bin Laden and al-Qaeda, however he does argue that the CIA committed a "significant tactical error" in giving the Pakistani Intelligence Service, the ISI, carte blanche authority over the distribution of about $3 billion to the Afghani resistance against the Soviets. The ISI, according to Bergen, mostly supported anti-Western mujahedin, including Pashtun General Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is a known associate of bin Laden.
Bergen does an excellent job of conveying the pervasiveness of al-Qaeda throughout the globe. He identifies many members in the United States, including a Disney World Employee, a California undergrad, a military advisor, Boston cab driver, and "several African-Americans." All the while he links the actions and influence of these people, and others on almost every continent, to acts of violence going back to the 1980s, in places including, but not limited to, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Tanzania, New York, Egypt, Afghanistan, Yemen, Kashmir, Kenya, and Sudan. Most poignant, is Bergen's small biography of Ali Mohamed, whom is describes as an al-Qaeda "sleeper" who was able to "penetrate one of the U.S. military's most secretive establishments and plot terrorist attacks on American soil."
"Holy War, Inc." does, however, have its shortcoming. In may places the writing seems thrown together and even sloppy at times. Bergen, in his afterword, apologizes saying that the book had to be revised and rushed to press after September 11th. Bergen also often takes the reader on tangent after tangent into everything from the lives of minor characters to camels copulating in the middle of the road. An additional, but perhaps unavoidable, difficulty is the alphabet soup of Muslim names that gets thrown at the reader. Presumably this book is targeted toward a Western audience and an attempt to mitigate the confusion over which Mohammed did what would have been helpful.
Toward the end of the book Bergen attempts to debunk Professor Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" theory. Bergen rejects Huntington's argument on empirical grounds and maintains that nationalism and power politics are still the best predictors of rivalry in the post-Cold War world. However, his feeble arguments make it grossly obvious that Bergen is a journalist and not a political scholar. He never actually addresses any of Huntington's core arguments, but rather simply lists several loosely interpreted counterexamples.
To finish his book, Bergen recommends several pragmatic steps that the United States needs to take to effectively battle al-Qaeda. First, the United States needs to leave behind its Cold War mentality and rethink everything, especially the employment of military force and the business of intelligence gathering. He argues that our reliance on electronic intelligence is not effective against a man like bin Laden who has stopped using telephones since 1997. Also, the U.S. should not rely as heavily on intelligence from the Pakistani ISI, since many members are sympathetic to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The U.S. should therefore develop more human intelligence sources, specifically recruiting agents from the many rival tribes in Afghanistan, such as the Northern Alliance. Also, the world needs to be ever vigilant with the existing nuclear stockpile to ensure that nuclear material does not find its way into the hands of al-Qaeda. Bergen does not believe the problem would go away if bin Laden were to be killed, however he acknowledges that his organization would "be dealt a severe blow if bin Laden were ushered from the world."
Finally, Bergen argues that the best way to eliminate al-Qaeda is to "shut down permanently the Afghan training camps where the foot soldiers of Holy War, Inc. learn their deadly skills". It is these camps that turn unskilled, undisciplined Arab men into professional terror soldiers. Without the camps the recruits cannot easily learn how to make bombs or organize themselves into cells capable of carrying out elaborate plans.
"Holy War, Inc." is a good book for someone who wants to transcend the pro-Western rhetoric surrounding Osama bin Laden and simply get the straight facts. Peter Bergen's journalist flair allows the reader to take in a heap of information and draw their own conclusions. That is not to say that Bergen does not advocate his own opinions, but he does not allow his personal biases to obscure the facts. An enormous strength of this book is Bergen's in-depth knowledge of his subject matter. He personally travels all over the Muslim world to track down facts and interview key personalities. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning the facts about al-Qaeda , or anyone who would like to get some insight into the inner workings and motivations of Osama bin Laden.
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Summary: Holy War, Inc.: It's Closer Than You Think!
Review: I wasn't sure what to think with this Westernized biography of Osama bin Laden, drawn mostly from the conclussion I reached when I finished reading "Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War On America". I thought for sure this was going to be another pro-American bashing of Middle Eastern guerrilla warfare techniques, with no emphasis on fact. Thankfully I was given exactly what I wanted with this book. Facts. Lots of them. What this book is isn't so much a biography on Osama bin Laden as it is a biography of the network of "holy warriors" whom he employs, and plots with, al-Qauda. This book gave an excellent example of the global reach of bin laden's "terrorist" group, and it's frustration with American foreign policy. I would highly recommned this to anyone who is sick of the blind patriotism which has sprung up in the wake of 9/11, and desire real facts, and truth.
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Summary: They're Everywhere!
Review: They're everywhere! A reader who tends toward paranoia will feel the presence of al-Qaeda operatives everywhere. Peter Bergen succeeds in weaving Osama bin Laden and his organization into the fabric of our daily lives. By his account, al-Qaeda members in the United States have included a Disney World Employee, a California undergrad, a military advisor, Boston cab driver, and "several African-Americans." Bergen traces the actions and influence of bin Laden followers across several continents and associates them with acts of violence going back to the late 1980's. He attempts to identify the source of the anti-American sentiment, reaching the same conclusions that other writers have suggested. As you read this book you should construct a matrix to relate people with events. Although the network is described as immense Bergen seems to identify a small cadre of organizers and planners. For a better understanding of Islam and some insight into the philosophy that drives Osama bin Laden read ISLAM: The Straight Path by John Esposito. The book may be difficult to find.
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Summary: Not Only THE Story of bin Laden, but of Islamic Radicals
Review: This book had essentially been written before September 11 and then was transformed to get more information out by a team of editors over the short time of two weeks. The author has provided us with critical information about the Islamic world and how bin Laden came to Director of Terrorism for a large group of disenfranchised and unhappy Middle Eastern men. Even with ALL the information that has filled the cable system, the print media, the web, and via word of mouth, this book touches all the bases. The author presents the vital information - even the material which inflames most Americans - without a great deal of emotion. He reamins calm when other media pundits and authors are almost certainly reaping the rewards of expressing emotion to feed the sense of national outrage. As someone with an ancient MBA (1979) and a EE/math/physics/CS degree (1972) the presentation of bin Laden's use of businesses was of particular interest. Bin Laden clearly thinks of himself as an economist, hence his expression in one of the videotapes released that the collapse of the WTC caused great damage to the US economy, but this line of thinking is flawed: he appartently has no grasp of how large the US economy is and he REALLY has no grasp of how little the West has had to do with the miserable conditions of Palestinian refugees, and the other millions of impoverished Middle Eastern people connected to Islam. He obviously never read "Cities and the Wealth of Nations" by Jane Jacobs. Largely what bin Laden has done with his businesses is take money he collects - rather than creates, as do most of the massively wealthy and powerful, including Enron-like corporations - and uses it for reasons of destruction. He also uses the built in fragilities of the Islamic system - the four wives for every rich man allotment, the hunger of children in Pakistan and Afghanistan and other countries - to turn the boys into holy warriors by giving them a purpose in life, a means of avoiding starvation, funding schools that teach nothing about the world, and training the most disaffected to be terrorists. The young men he takes in as ignorant, starving children, full of fear for the subsistence necessities, turns them into holy warriors by giving them shelter and a one dimensional view of life, uses the lack of sexuality under the Muslim system for poor young men... to drive this terrorist frenzy. Bin Laden, with all his millions, was given a life free of want, and yet found his most fullfilling place in the war against the Soviet Union. What this book doesn't state bluntly, but perhaps should: without terrorism and bloodshed, bin Laden's life would be barren. The terror he inflicts and the damage he does are little more than excitement and emtertainment for his own personal satiation. He is said to live a simple live, but in comparison to the poor of the nations that he uses, he is still the "Great White (Robed) Hunter" manipulating the weak for hsi own personal pleasures, emotional, political, financial, religios. This is the book to read if you want to understand how he operates and what his sorry excuses are for attacking the West in lieu of constructive actions. He's not much of an economist and he's nothing of an engineer. He's wealth and he's adept at using that wealth to manipulate others to cause destruction. Other than hiding behind a religion, I see no difference between bin Laden and those he allegedly fights against (using the bodies and lives of others as cheap fuel for the fires of terrorism, of course, while he does photo-ops.) This is the book.
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