The Longest War - a book review.

[Swede]

Bergen, a national security analyst for CNN, impressively covers it all: Al ­Qaeda’s aspirations and its 9/11 attack, the Bush administration’s panicky response, the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the crucial and continuing unhelpful role of Pakistan, and the terrorist episodes in London and Madrid. Other books, most notably Bob Woodward’s series on the wars as viewed from Washington, have bitten off big chunks of this story, but Bergen’s, to my knowledge, is the first to credibly cover the global sweep of events over the last 10 years, exploring not just American views but also Al Qaeda’s.

He begins by emphasizing the subtle long-term costs of early Western victories: how the 1967 war between Israel and its Arab neighbors undercut socialist Arab nationalism and instead spurred the rise of Islamic extremism; how the Persian Gulf war deployments of 1990-91 humiliated Arabs and intensified the ­anti-Americanism of Osama bin Laden and others. We did not notice it, but the war began back then. The first Qaeda attack against Americans came a year later, in Yemen. And the year after that, Bergen reports, Al Qaeda may have been involved in the “Black Hawk Down” battles in Mogadishu, Somalia.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/books/review/Ricks-t.html?ref=world