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Authors: Peter L. Bergen
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appeal to any wider constituency, andfailed to build a secure and effective operational base after the loss of Afghanistan. Though it survives intact and dangerous, al-Qaeda is hemmed in, weakened and limited in its operations. Its ability to force a decisive change in America’s Middle East policy is close to zero, even though it remains capable of dealing lethal blows around the world; like a snake backed into a corner, a weakened al-Qaeda is still dangerous.
Events since the launch of the “war on terror” have become deeply politicized: the debate about whether bin Laden could have been killed at the battle of Tora Bora in the winter of 2001; the putative linkages between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, which were an important rationale for the war in Iraq; whether the American effort in Afghanistan was shortchanged because of the Iraqi conflict; the efficacy of coercive interrogations of al-Qaeda detainees and of military commissions to try militants held at Guantánamo; the scale of the threat to the West posed by al-Qaeda and its affiliates; the extent to which President Bush’s “surge” of troops into Iraq in 2007 or other factors brought a measure of stability there; and whether President Obama is committing his presidency to a war in South Asia that will replicate the failures of Vietnam. This history aims to provide an assessment of these and other issues that have not received enough objective analysis.
This is also a book about the power of ideas. We are a highly ideological species with a deep need for ideas that help us to narrate and make sense of an often senseless world. For bin Laden and his followers, the world is explained by the idea that Islam is under assault by the West, in particular the United States, and that only by attacking America will this state of affairs ever be reversed. For its part, the Bush administration believed deeply that al-Qaeda and its supposed ally Saddam Hussein posed an existential threat to America and conflated that big idea with smaller fixations, such as its opposition to “nation building,” all of which contributed to the problems the United States has since faced in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Muslim world overall.
The book is divided into two parts. The first, titled “Hubris,” traces al-Qaeda’s miscalculations, and in particular its profound misunderstanding of the likely American response to 9/11, while also interweaving the strategic missteps of the United States from its initial anemic efforts in Afghanistan to its counterproductive invasion of Iraq. Part II , “Nemesis?” traces how the American government and military learned from their mistakes in Iraq and, later, Afghanistan and have since regained the initiative against al-Qaeda andits allies. At the same time, bin Laden and his followers have severely damaged themselves with their actions in the Muslim world, from Indonesia to Iraq. Yet the West has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory a number of times already in this long war, and the jihadist militants led by bin Laden have proven surprisingly resilient despite the wide range of forces arrayed against them.
Part I
Hubris
As a general rule , the easiest way to achieve complete strategic surprise is to commit an act that makes no sense or is even self-destructive.
—maxim once displayed on the desk of Robert Gates,
U.S. secretary of defense in the administrations
of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama
No one loves armed missionaries.
—Maximilien Robespierre
Part II
Nemesis?
Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.
—Niccolò Machiavelli
Note on Sources
I was able to interview many of the sources in the book on more than one occasion and the dates and places of all those interviews are noted in the footnotes. A partial list of the several hundred interviews I conducted for this history can be found in the next section. (A number of the people I interviewed were subsequently jailed, killed by
Events since the launch of the “war on terror” have become deeply politicized: the debate about whether bin Laden could have been killed at the battle of Tora Bora in the winter of 2001; the putative linkages between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, which were an important rationale for the war in Iraq; whether the American effort in Afghanistan was shortchanged because of the Iraqi conflict; the efficacy of coercive interrogations of al-Qaeda detainees and of military commissions to try militants held at Guantánamo; the scale of the threat to the West posed by al-Qaeda and its affiliates; the extent to which President Bush’s “surge” of troops into Iraq in 2007 or other factors brought a measure of stability there; and whether President Obama is committing his presidency to a war in South Asia that will replicate the failures of Vietnam. This history aims to provide an assessment of these and other issues that have not received enough objective analysis.
This is also a book about the power of ideas. We are a highly ideological species with a deep need for ideas that help us to narrate and make sense of an often senseless world. For bin Laden and his followers, the world is explained by the idea that Islam is under assault by the West, in particular the United States, and that only by attacking America will this state of affairs ever be reversed. For its part, the Bush administration believed deeply that al-Qaeda and its supposed ally Saddam Hussein posed an existential threat to America and conflated that big idea with smaller fixations, such as its opposition to “nation building,” all of which contributed to the problems the United States has since faced in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Muslim world overall.
The book is divided into two parts. The first, titled “Hubris,” traces al-Qaeda’s miscalculations, and in particular its profound misunderstanding of the likely American response to 9/11, while also interweaving the strategic missteps of the United States from its initial anemic efforts in Afghanistan to its counterproductive invasion of Iraq. Part II , “Nemesis?” traces how the American government and military learned from their mistakes in Iraq and, later, Afghanistan and have since regained the initiative against al-Qaeda andits allies. At the same time, bin Laden and his followers have severely damaged themselves with their actions in the Muslim world, from Indonesia to Iraq. Yet the West has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory a number of times already in this long war, and the jihadist militants led by bin Laden have proven surprisingly resilient despite the wide range of forces arrayed against them.
Part I
Hubris
As a general rule , the easiest way to achieve complete strategic surprise is to commit an act that makes no sense or is even self-destructive.
—maxim once displayed on the desk of Robert Gates,
U.S. secretary of defense in the administrations
of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama
No one loves armed missionaries.
—Maximilien Robespierre
Part II
Nemesis?
Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.
—Niccolò Machiavelli
Note on Sources
I was able to interview many of the sources in the book on more than one occasion and the dates and places of all those interviews are noted in the footnotes. A partial list of the several hundred interviews I conducted for this history can be found in the next section. (A number of the people I interviewed were subsequently jailed, killed by
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