Product Description

Who is Osama bin Laden—the only terrorist leader ever to have declared a holy war against America? What drives him and those he leads to hate a West that helped enrich and arm them? Bin Laden's name has been linked to a number of incidents that have cost Americans their lives, including the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and the destruction of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Now, he is linked to the recent catastrophic assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Here is a comprehensive account of the rise of bin Laden. In meticulous detail, world-renowned terrorism expert Yossef Bodansky uncovers the events in bin Laden's life that turned the once-promising engineering student into a cold-blooded leader of radical Islam. In the process, Bodansky reveals a chilling story that is as current as today's headlines but as ancient as the Crusades—a story that transcends bin Laden and any other single man. This book is a sobering wake-up call.
"This fascinating account of Osama bin Laden's war against America illustrates the murky world of Islamic extremism and state sponsored terrorism."
—Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Leavey Professor, Department of Government, Georgetown University
"Americans need to know about Osama bin Laden, and the best place to find out is in this trenchant study of the man. A brilliant work."
—Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #170801 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-24
• Released on: 2001-09-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

From Amazon.com
Shortly after terrorists led by Osama bin Laden attacked the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered retaliatory missile strikes against targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. It was the first time the United States had responded to an individual terrorist with such overwhelming military force. Bin Laden, of course, is no run-of-the-mill rabble-rouser; Clinton called him "perhaps the preeminent organizer and financier of international terrorism in the world today." That's quite a label for someone who, as biographer Yossef Bodansky describes, "lives with his four wives and some fifteen children in a small cave in eastern Afghanistan" without running water. Yet he is "a principal player in a tangled and sinister web of terrorism-sponsoring states, intelligence chieftains, and master terrorists." Remarkably little is known about the man; as Bodansky reveals, even the year of bin Laden's birth is uncertain. This book, then, is more than the story of a single terrorist. It's a description of a whole movement waging a jihad--holy war--against the United States in the belief that America's modernizing influence on Arab nations thwarts Islamic fundamentalist goals. Bin Laden is strikingly current, extremely well informed, and thoroughly detailed. Readers interested in facts about the Middle East's violent underworld will find it fascinating--and chilling. Bodansky notes that bin Laden has become a hero to radical Muslim youth, and Osama is now a very popular baby name in many Arab countries. --John J. Miller

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
"This fascinating account of Osama bin Laden's war against America illustrates the murky world of Islamic extremism and state-sponsored terrorism. I strongly recommend it.

Review
“This fascinating account of Osama bin Laden’s war against America illustrates the murky world of Islamic extremism and state sponsored terrorism.”
--Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Leavey Professor, Department of Government, Georgetown University

“Americans need to know about Osama bin Laden, and the best place to find out is in this trenchant study of the man. A brilliant work.”
--Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard

Customer Reviews

Very Important Book
I am fairly well educated (Master's degree) and read a lot (3 newspapers a day and 5-6 books a month), but this is the most important book I have ever read. While it does have some errors (mostly about bin Laden's early life and family), overall it is the most complete history and description of the Islamist movement that I have seen.

To be honest, I did not understand what the Islamist movement was before reading this book. Nothing in newspapers or on television has explained this movement as clearly and comprehensively as Bodansky has with this book. Essentially, it is a totalitarian political movement cloaked by Islam. It has many similarities to communism - a utopian view that their philosophy will make life/the world perfect, lack of civil rights, no free press, no freedom of religion, only the Islamic movement makes it especially bad for women. Examples of this type of government can be seen in Iran, Sudan and Taliban-era Afghanistan. Its religious cover makes it attractive to many devout Muslims, some of whom seem to believe the whole world should be either Muslim or dead. Many of the leaders of the Islamsist movement have said that the ultimate goal of the Islamist movement is world domination. And that seems to be how they are behaving.

The most shocking thing about this book is that it was written before 9/11 and predicted some sort of "spectacular" and "devastating" attack on the US, either in New York or Washington, DC.

I was disappointed to read about the US/Clinton Administration's response to attacks prior to 9/11 (this book was written long before 9/11 and ends in 1999). While the Clinton Administration did attempt some retaliation, it was, from the terrorists' standpoint, laughable and accomplished nothing more than making the US look ridiculous. This seems to be mostly due to the incredible naivete of that administration with regard to the growing threat of the Islamist movement.

I feel as though this book has allowed me to read the news about the Middle East now with some comprehension of what specific events really mean. I understand the difficult situation we are in and expect that it will probably last for many more years. This is not an easy book - it is detailed and complicated to read and contains information that is hard to digest. Still, it was the most important book I have ever read.

Background for Sept. 11th 2001
Before 9/11, I did not who Osama Bin Laden was, this book tells you in no uncertain terms who he is and what we as a nation are up against. This book was written about 2.5 years before 9/11 and our war on terrorism but it will give you answers to the questions people are asking now. The link between Osama and Iraq, where the WMD's are, etc. In the light of 9/11 this is one eye opening and scary book.

Over the Top in Iraq, Brilliant in All Other Respects

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.