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Title: Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America by Yossef Bodansky ISBN: 0-7615-3581-0 Publisher: Prima Lifestyles Pub. Date: 24 September, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.51 (78 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Remarkable treatise has many flaws but sparkles at times
Comment: You don't have to see the author's name to guess a Russian emigre wrote Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America. Yossef Bodansky endlessly and repetitively describes minor events and characters. On the postive side, portions read like a sparkling essay. Because Bodansky doesn't exercise much discretion is editing, you get voluminous details about Islamic terrorists, the historical impulses that created al-Qaeda, and how these Muslim radicals view themselves and the "infidel." The result of this sometimes plodding but often riveting treatise is a great introduction into the murky and twisted world of Islamic terror.
The book isn't a biography of Osama bin Laden, either. It is a history of al-Qaeda. Bin Laden is the central figure but hardly the exclusive focus in the terror organization Bodansky chronicles.
Osama bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America was published prior to the U.S.S. Cole attack and long before September 11th. The book could be described as dated yet it reveals great prescience. Bodansky sounds many warnings about al-Qaeda activity and support in Yemen, the nation where the Cole atrocity later took place. Bodanksy also predicted the United States would suffer "spectacular attacks," a term we now all painfully know. These forewarnings of terror are, in retrospect, amazing. Yet Bodansky undermines his credibility at times with outrageous assertions like the claim that TWA Flight 800 was brought down by a terrorist bomb. He also portrays an al-Qaeda that is much braver and more intelligent than recent events would indicate.
The strongest aspect of this book is how it follows bin Laden's conversion and those of a like mind from warrior to terrorist. After these religious zealots defeat the Soviet Empire in Afghanistan, bin Laden and al-Qaeda go on to engage in messicanic terror campaigns in other Islamic lands. Bodansky explains how the United States and the West incorrectly downplayed Serbian claims of al-Qaeda infiltration of Bosnia and Kosovo. The author makes it apparent that Russia's fight against the Chechens is hardly a David vs. Goliath morality tale. As Bodansky describes it, al-Qaeda found an early ally in and eventually fell out with Saddam Hussein (bin Laden's rocky relationship with the Iraqi dictator is remarkably similar to the one Abu Nidal experienced as recounted a decade ago in Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire by Patrick Seale). Other benefactors like Iran find bin Laden equally useful and frustrating. As al-Qaeda becomes bolder in its initial confrontations with the United States in the Horn of Africa, it seems all too obvious in hindsight that the terror group would come to American shores to kill innocents.
You won't know much more about bin Laden the man than you probably do now if you read this book, but you will have many more details about al-Qaeda the organization and insights into the terrorists who murder and maim in its name.
Rating: 5
Summary: A real eye-opener!
Comment: I don't usually read books on history, politics, or world affairs, but I wish I had read this a long time ago. The author explains the complicated politics of the Middle East, along with ever-shifting loyalties, and our country's own manipulation by Pakistan, all of which contributed to the rise of Osama Bin Laden and worldwide terrorism. The book is detailed and well researched. Although it's not a "quick" read, it was so informative, I had a hard time putting it down.
This book was written before the events of September 11 2001, but it gives the background information to put those events into perspective. It made me realize that in America, we've all been living in denial for the past 20 years, while overseas, a lot of anti-American (and anti-Western) sentiment has been brewing. I had no idea how many people out there would die to ensure the fall of Western civilization. We take our religious freedom, as well as separation of church and state, for granted in this country. I have never appreciated it as much as I do right now. Thank you to Mr. Bodansky for opening my eyes.
Rating: 4
Summary: Over the Top in Iraq, Brilliant in All Other Respects
Comment:
The author is a brilliant Arabist who has refined the art of acquiring and exploiting open sources of information on bin Laden and terrorism to a near science. His "MOSQINT" lectures draw packed houses of professional intelligence officers from over 40 countries.
The book is a hard read, but if one desires to understand the murky inter-relationships among the *governments* of Pakistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, among others, the businesses and charities working actively to channel government and private funds to terrorists, and the global loosely-knit network of "fellow travelers" and jihadists, then this book is "Ref A."
In my personal view, the author is a bit over the top in trying to link Iraq to bin Laden. This reminds of the Claire Sterling-Ollie North school of "anything goes" as long as you believe it. Having said that (and so has Vaclav Havel, President of Czechoslovakia, who personally dismissed a lie consistently told by the Bush Administration about a meeting in Prague between a terrorist known by the FBI to have been in Florida at the time, and an Iraqi intelligence officer), I give the book very high marks in all other respects.
The Conclusion, appropriately Chapter 13, is titled "What Next." The book is worthy of purchase and recurring reference for this chapter alone. Especially troubling is the documentation of how many terrorists are moving around the world on legitimate passports from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Turkey, Kuwait, Algeria, Albania, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and other countries. The book adds confirmation to the many other references I have seen (many posted to OSS.Net news and reference section) regarding the active involvement of the Pakistani intelligence service in funding and training and facilitating travel for bin Laden personally, for his top lieutenants, and for terrorists in general.
The author's focus in the conclusion on the potential for Central Asia (all former khanates, all Muslim, all angry separatists from the Soviet Union) is especially interesting, as we see the beginnings of a "third front" there, with India-Pakistan being a fourth front, and South Asia a fifth front. Latin America and Africa are the sixth front. In brief, the author is one of those documenting the depth and scope of a global terrorism threat that the Bush Administration has unwisely chosen to attack with conventional military means, on six different fronts, none of which is sustainable in the medium or long term.
The author anticipated terrorist attacks against the UN and NATO when he discusses, on page 403, the Muslim declarations that include the UN and NATO in the fatwas against the USA, because the Muslim world "is being deceived by [these organizations], because they are hostile to Muslims and are responsible for all the massacres being perpetrated against Muslims in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine, Albania, and Kosovo." The UN in Iraq has been hit twice. I expect NATO in Afghanistan to be hit several times between now and the end of 2003, and I expect US special forces units to be massacred in detail in Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
Bin Laden, dead or alive. Right. Bin Laden could not, in his wildest prayers to Allah, have imagined a better partner for fostering terrorism around the world than hip-shooting cowboy and unilateralist George W. Bush. Bin Laden created a global system of terrorism, the fire if you will, and George W. Bush and his neo-conservatives are blindly pouring $250 billion worth of tax-payer funded gasoline on that fire.
The author has recently been the recipient of the Golden Candle Award from the international open source intelligence committee. His citation reads:
"For his global multi-lingual open source investigations into terrorism, and his extraordinary professional achievement in writing and publishing "BIN LADEN: The Man Who Declared War on America", years before the 9-11 World Trade Center demonstration of what well-funded suicidal terrorism can achieve when intelligence and policy both fail to focus on the threat."
Whatever research or opinion flaws might be contained in this book, it is an essential reference in understanding both the dangers of terrorism, and the futility of the current US "strategy" for defeating terrorism by hammering and then abandoning Afghanistan and Iraq.
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Title: The High Cost of Peace: How Washington's Middle East Policy Left America Vulnerable to Terrorism by Yossef Bodansky, Yossef Bodansky ISBN: 0761535799 Publisher: Prima Lifestyles Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror by Rohan Gunaratna ISBN: 0425191141 Publisher: Berkley Pub Group Pub. Date: 03 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism by Robert Baer ISBN: 140004684X Publisher: Three Rivers Press Pub. Date: 07 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Target America & the West: Terrorism Today by Yossef Bodansky ISBN: 1561712698 Publisher: SPI Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 1993 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: The Age of Sacred Terror by Daniel Benjamin, Steven Simon ISBN: 0375508597 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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