Join our mailing list! Hardcover eBook. Table of Contents Excerpt Rave and Reviews. About The Book. Chapter 1: Sphinx Without a Riddle? A sphinx without a riddle.
He also led an organization, al-Qaeda, whose very existence was a well-kept secret for a decade after its founding in the late s. The bin Laden family, one of the richest in the Middle East, had also largely avoided scrutiny. Was the leader of al-Qaeda a sphinx without a riddle? In recent years a great deal of information has surfaced to illuminate bin Laden and the inner workings of al-Qaeda.
Secondly, many bin Laden associates have finally shown a willingness to talk. The result is that a decade after his death, it is now possible to appraise him in all the many dimensions of his life: as a family man; as a religious zealot; as a battlefield commander; as a terrorist leader; as a fugitive. He was born a young man of contradictions, and he kept adding to them: he adored his wives and children, yet brought ruin to many of them. He was a multimillionaire, but he insisted his family live like paupers.
He projected a modest and humble persona that appealed to his followers, but he was also narcissistically obsessed about how his own image played out in the media, and he ignored any advice from the leaders of al-Qaeda that conflicted with his own dogmatic views.
He was fanatically religious, yet he was also willing to kill thousands of civilians in the name of Islam, despite the fact that some verses of the Koran emphasize the protections afforded to innocents, even in times of war. He inspired deep loyalty, yet in the end, even his longtime bodyguards turned against him.
And while he inflicted the most lethal act of mass murder in United States history, bin Laden failed to achieve any of his strategic goals. Al-Qaeda did have some tactical successes. And al-Qaeda expanded its affiliated groups from Africa to Asia. There were also serious American policy failures. They include letting bin Laden escape at the battle of Tora Bora in December , which allowed him to lead his organization for another decade, and the conflation of al-Qaeda with Saddam Hussein, which helped make the case for the Iraq War, a war that ultimately produced the very thing it was supposed to prevent—an alliance between al-Qaeda and Iraqi Baathists.
But bin Laden and al-Qaeda also had many failures of tactics and strategy. For one thing, the United States eventually came up with an increasingly effective tactical playbook against al-Qaeda and other jihadist militant groups—a playbook that largely, if imperfectly, worked, relying on armed drones, a much-expanded intelligence community, and Special Operations Forces raids.
The key question about bin Laden is: Why did he build an organization dedicated to the mass murders of civilians? Rather, bin Laden went through a gradual process of radicalization that first began during his teenage years when he became a religious zealot. The invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets in , when bin Laden was twenty-two, turned him into a leading financier of Muslim volunteers from around the globe who were drawn to the Afghan holy war.
Eight years later bin Laden led his followers into battle against the Russians. From that battle emerged al-Qaeda, a group dedicated to spreading jihad, holy war, around the world. The introduction of hundreds of thousands of U. He started conceiving of the Americans as his main enemy while he was living in exile in Sudan during the first half of the s.
This book is an attempt to explain how that transformation happened. About The Author. Peter L. Product Details. Raves and Reviews. A journal put together by the sprawling Bin Laden family in Abbottabad — 27 people, including wives, children and grandchildren — allows us a glimpse of the leader of al-Qaida as he ponders how he should react to the Arab spring uprisings.
But The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden does much more than reveal a human side to a mass murderer, offering the general reader an authoritative and convincing portrait of a man whose misdeeds changed all our lives in many ways, none for the better. One obvious reason that no one will be writing books like this about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi , the Islamic State leader killed by US special forces in Syria, is that his life story is not particularly gripping.
The riches to rags radicalisation of Bin Laden is undeniably compelling. He was the son of a low-status temporary wife of an extremely rich and very devout immigrant brickie turned construction magnate. From his early teens, Bin Laden, timid and ill at ease, was seeking to live his life according to the most demanding strictures of the puritanical strand of Islam practised in the kingdom. Here, Bergen makes the very good point that this operation was a short-term disaster for the group, leading to the loss of its vital haven, the death of hundreds of fighters and to a life on the run for its leaders.
What saved al-Qaida was the invasion of Iraq , which did not just divert attention and resources but gave the global movement of Islamist militancy a tremendous boost.
Bergen angrily demolishes the lies that underpinned US policy under the Bush administration and for which few, if any, have ever been held accountable. Having spoken to many of the former CIA officials involved in compiling successive intelligence in and early that found no link between Bin Laden and Iraq, Bergen is well placed to nail that particular falsehood. But he also shows other myths for what they are. No, the Pakistanis did not shelter the al-Qaida leader for a decade for their own dastardly purposes.
Though all of this has been said before, it is still important to say it all again and refute dangerous, ideological fantasy with solid research and reporting.
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