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By Peter L. Bergen
Retailesque
TEN YEARS HAVE handed because the stunning assaults at the international exchange heart, and after seven years of clash, the final U.S. strive against troops left Iraq—only to maneuver into Afghanistan, the place the ten-year-old struggle maintains: the struggle on terror rages without transparent lead to sight. In The Longest struggle Peter Bergen deals a entire heritage of this battle and its evolution, from the recommendations devised within the wake of the 11th of September assaults to the struggling with in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and past. not like the other publication in this topic, the following Bergen tells the tale of this moving war’s mess ups and successes from the views of either the us and al-Qaeda and its allies. He is going into the houses of al-Qaeda contributors, rooting into the resource in their devotion to terrorist reasons, and spends time within the places of work of the main gamers shaping the U.S. strategic efforts within the quarter. At a time whilst many are pissed off or fatigued with what has turn into an everlasting multigenerational clash, this e-book will supply an illuminating narrative that not just lines the arc of the struggle yet initiatives its most probably destiny.
Weaving jointly inner records from al-Qaeda and the U.S. places of work of counterterrorism, first-person interviews with top-level jihadists and senior Washington officers, together with his personal reviews at the flooring within the heart East, Bergen balances the money owed of every part, revealing how al-Qaeda has advanced when you consider that 11th of September and the explicit methods the U.S. executive has spoke back within the ongoing struggle.
Bergen additionally uncovers the strategic mistakes devoted on either sides—the manner that al-Qaeda’s daring assault at the usa on 11th of September really undermined its target and brought on the cave in of the Taliban and the destruction of the organization’s shelter in Afghanistan, and the way al-Qaeda is admittedly wasting the warfare of principles within the Muslim global. The e-book additionally exhibits how the U.S. undermined its ethical place during this conflict with its activities at Guantánamo and coercive interrogations—including the intense rendition of Abu Omar, who used to be abducted via the CIA in Milan in 2003 and was once tortured for 4 years in Egyptian prisons; his case represents the 1st and basically time that CIA officers were charged and convicted of the crime of kidnapping.
In analyzing different strategic mistakes the U.S. has devoted, Bergen deals a scathing critique of the Clinton and Bush administrations’ lack of ability to competently check and counter the al-Qaeda chance, Bush’s deeply inaccurate purposes for invading Iraq—including the tale of the way the invasion was once introduced established, partly, at the perspectives of an vague educational who positioned forth theories approximately Iraq’s involvement with al-Qaeda—and the Obama administration’s efforts in Afghanistan.
At a severe second in international background The Longest conflict provides the definitive account of the continued conflict opposed to terror.
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Additional resources for The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda
Example text
Moreover, after two years, the privatization process had become largely irreversible. The destruction of shuttered factories by looters and weather had left many of them beyond repair, and the necessary, skilled technicians had been dismissed. Beyond this, the new Iraqi government, constructed according to the neoliberal recipes of the occupation, was not equipped to construct or sustain the sorts of manufacturing enterprises that Brinkley was trying to revive. 11 The Baghdad tractor factory, like many other resuscitated plants, was operating at only partial capacity.
The answer lies in following the logic of using America’s military supremacy to impose economic solutions in the Middle East and elsewhere. S. 37 It is in this context that weapons of mass destruction became an issue, since any country that possessed WMDs would likely be able to resist such surgical attack. The PNAC made a particular point of saying that no adversary or potential adversary should be allowed to acquire WMDs, since these would effectively deter an invasion: Weak states operating small arsenals of crude ballistic missiles, armed with basic nuclear warheads or other weapons of mass destruction, will be in a strong position to deter the United States from using conventional force, no matter the technological or other advantages we may enjoy.
S. invasion of Iraq, designed to “open up” the Iraqi oil fields to foreign investment, was therefore entirely consistent 34 War Without End with the long legacy of military and economic intervention around the world. To use Smith’s phrase, the policy that led to the invasion of Iraq was designed “to impose a global capitalism dressed up as liberal democracy” on the Middle East. S. Goals for the New Iraqi Regime The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the administrative apparatus installed by the United States to run Iraq after the overthrow of the Hussein regime, might have focused narrowly on the oil goals of the Cheney Energy Task Force.