The Next Attack
The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
The authors of the bestseller The Age of Sacred Terror show how the United States is losing the war on terror and what we need to do if we're serious about winning it.
We are losing. Four years and two wars after September 11, 2001, the United States is no closer to victory in the "war on terror." In fact, we are unwittingly clearing the way for the next attack.
In this provocative new book, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon show how the terrorist threat is evolving, with a broadening array of tactics, an army of new fighters and, most ominously, a widening base of support in the global Muslim community. The jihadist movement has been galvanized by the example of 9/11 and the missteps of the U.S. government, which has consistently failed to understand the nature of the new terror. Left on this trajectory, much worse faces us in the near future.
It doesn't have to be this way. The Next Attack makes the case that America has the capacity to stem the tide of Islamic terrorism, but Benjamin and Simon caution that this will require a far-reaching and creative new strategy, one that recognizes that the struggle has been over-militarized and that a campaign for reform must be more than rhetoric and less than bayonets. And they point out how America's increasing tendency to frame the conflict in religious terms has undermined our ability to advance our interests.
Is America is truly equipped to do what is necessary to combat Islamist terrorism, or are we too blinded by our own ideology? The answer to that question will determine how secure we will truly be, in the years and decades to come.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The chilling first words, "We are losing," capture the tone of this scathing evaluation of the Bush administration's responses to the September 11 attacks. Benjamin, a Center for Strategic and International Studies senior fellow, and Simon, an instructor at Georgetown University, authors of the award-winning Age of Sacred Terror: Radical Islam's War Against America, do not mince words; America's foreign policy vis-a-vis the Muslim world is bankrupt and has "cleared the way for the next attack-and those that will come after." By invading Iraq, the authors argue, the U.S. demonstrated a profound misunderstanding of the scope of the threat posed by al Qaeda and other jihadist groups, and has turned Iraq into a "country-sized training ground" for terrorists. The authors also explore terror's philosophical roots, analyzing how salafism, a strain of Islamic fundamentalism, dominates jihadist beliefs, as well as how the Internet helps facilitate global dissemination of its tenets, strategies and tactics. The authors' remedies for this baleful state of affairs include fostering an understanding that independent cell-based terrorist units, not state sponsors, are the backbone of the movement; dispensing with reflexive use of military solutions; improving links with foreign intelligence and law enforcement agencies; and recognizing the limitations of democracy in solving developing nations' problems. Not a book that'll appeal to readers whose politics are right of center, it's nevertheless a sobering analysis of compromised American security.
More Books Like This