Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001
Book Review: gripping and informative-
Summary: 5 Stars
I recommend every American read this book. It most likely won't change your mind about what we should or shouldn't do, or who we should or shouldn't vote for. But it will educate you as to what already happened.
It is an informative book. It should be mandatory reading for fans of stupid conspiracy theorists like the "Loose Change" idiots, or the "Israel/ Bush planned the whole thing" nutters.
The book is also a good chronology of the failures of the CIA in Afghanistan. The same Afghanistan that was also the one of the CIA's greatest successes.
The CIA after years of making mistakes and not seeing the threat did come around, and then it was politicians and the State Dept that foiled the CIA's efforts and failed the people of Afghanistan and the US.
The Clinton white house engaged Bin Laden the same ineffectual non conscientious way they engaged North Korea. They also ineffectually engaged the genocide being committed by the Serbs in Bosnia, and then later by the Serbs in Kosovo. As well as ineffectually engaging Iraq.
OBL declared war on the US and all US citizens in the 1990's. It wasn't a secret declaration of war. And it came as no surprise to US allies in Afghanistan who were enemies of the Afghan Arabs and the Taliban. They had been trying to tell us the same for years.
The CIA told the white house that there was a war declared on us. The CIA was slow, but with each attack;
The attack on the USS Cole.
The attack on the Embassies in Africa.
The attack on the Air Force Barracks in Saudi Arabia.
Various attacks on CIA personnel in Yemen and Afghanistan.
With each attack the lower levels of the CIA became more outspoken. After the embassy bombings, one CIA employee tearfully told Tenet that the blood was on his hands. Guys at the CIA knew an attack on American soil was coming. By the late 90's even the reluctant CIA director had come around (though he never endorsed any of his people's plans against Osama or the Taliban). Tenet did warn his buddy democratic congressman to avoid air travel and to not congregate in public at the end of 1999 because of the imminent Al Qaeda threat. They were a big enough threat to warn a congressman that his life might be in danger around large amounts of US citizens that might be victims. But Al Qaeda was apparently not big enough a threat to warrant helping their opposition the Northern Alliance. Not big enough a threat to OK a strike against them.
Well one of the CIA's many suggestions was taken. A cruise missile attack was launched on the day that the FBI came back with the DNA evidence on Monica Lewinsky's dress. Unfortunately the Pakistanis were told about the upcoming cruise missile attack and they in turn told the Taliban, who informed their main benefactor OBL.
When the Bush administration came into office, they had in mind to unscrew many of the many many many mistakes of the previous administration (and perhaps some of the mistakes of the administration of the elder Bush).
As everyone knows, they did not act swiftly enough. And as I read the book that thought loomed over my head. And truthfully, even though Clinton probably understood the CIA when they told him that an attack were coming, there was not much he could do with an uncooperative military, and a congress that did not trust him on either side of the isle.
Clinton knew the CIA was right when customs had the good luck of interdicting a car bomb destined and capable of destroying a third of LAX. The FBI and other agencies were able to thwart attacks of the new millennium. And Clinton understood when the various agencies told him that it was luck alone that had enabled them to stop that Millennium attacks, and that they would most likely not catch the next one. Even if Clinton had done all the right things at that time, still the attack that was 9/11 was already launched. Killing bin Laden at that time would have unlikely stopped anything.
When the Clinton cronies left over in the white house told the new occupant, the Bush administration, of the Danger of bin Laden, they did not warm up to the facts fast enough.
Like the Clinton administration before it the Bush administration were told of the very likely upcoming attack. I think it was Richard Clark who told them; "act now like you are going to act after the attack, treat our uncooperative allies of Pakistan and the Gulf States, as if the attack had already happened". He said that or something like it. From all accounts I read sometimes Clarke was spot on, but other times he was a selfish toolbag.
Condoleezza Rice did eventually push for all the right decisions to be made. She did finally decide that the Taliban was our enemy, and that it was unlikely that any amount of diplomacy was going to change that. Nor was any amount of diplomacy going to make Pakistan and the various Gulf States realize that the Taliban and Al Qaeda were our enemy with our current policies.
By the time that Rice decided that Al Qaeda was our enemy, about a decade and a half of various of our Afghan allies constantly pleading to us the same thing. Rice agreed for the CIA to help Ahmed Shah Massoud and a coalition of other Afghan opponents of the Taliban genocide, and their extremist Wahabbi interpretation of Islam. The US finally agreed to help our allies against our sworn enemies, about the same time the Al Qaeda finally figured out how to kill the wily, brilliant and elusive Massaud.
It should be noted that despite all the rhetoric of the injustice of the Palestinian situation. That was not the cause of 9/11. The Arab jihadists held the Palestinian cause as an afterthought at best.
Also not a motivation for the attack was any Afghan policy that we had. If anything it was a lack of a US policy in Afghanistan that caused the attack. We stood by and did nothing while the most extreme elements in the Middle East and Pakistan funded and equipped a faction in Afghanistan foreign to Afghans and Afghan history. We even did some standing by while Pakistan used our money to fund our enemies.
The main motivation of the 9/11 attacks was our policy of containment in Iraq.
Also I'd like to note that one of the reasons that the Clinton administration did not want to help Massaud, even when it became clear the abuses that the Taliban were inflicting on women, and even after it became clear that Al Qaeda had attacked US already over seas, and was planning an attack on US soil. The main reason that Clinton did not want to help our ally fight our enemy is the pariah of American liberty, the drug war. To compete with the funding of oil Sheikhs, and the funding and assistance of the Pakistani military, Massaud was benefiting off of the number one cash crop in Afghanistan, opium.
If there is one thing today that will ensure that our enemies in Afghanistan stick around a little longer than they should, it is our attempt at eradicating the poppy fields. We are driving the vast profits of the drug trade away from the legal government, and to whoever will oppose us. We are probably not going to stop a single European drug user from getting his fix, and I don't know why we are trying.
Book Review: The best history available
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is the best modern (pre-September 11th) history of Afghanistan that I found. It gives valuable background and insight into how that region of the world operates as well as how we (the US) have traditionally dealt with it. I've seen Steve Coll used as a source for many subsequent Osama Bin Laden/Al Qaeda/Afghanistan documentaries on TV and his analysis is consistent. He comes off as very knowledgeable and seems to have a lot of 'inside' information. He doesn't get overly political, just tells it like it was, which is hard to find these days. At times, this approach causes the text to be a little dry but I prefer this to the alternative (i.e. rewriting history for entertainment value). If you are interested in the war on terror, this is a must read.Book Review: For those who want to understand how it happened
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is in one word: Superb. It is an easy to read, well-researched, in-depth and amazing account and historic background of how international terrorism on the Islamic front developed, evolved, was linked to agencies
and policitical decisions. If you ever wanted to understand why Afghanistan is where it is today, who bin Landen is and where he came from, which ties exist between the US and Saudia Arabia, how Islamic fundamentalist terror is justified - you get it all in this one book. Highly credible, authentic, gripping. A must-read by all means.
Book Review: Outstanding book
Summary: 5 Stars
A great background of Afghanistan leading up to OEF. The author just presents the facts and doesn't offer his own political opinion.Book Review: Desperate attempt by the ill-prepared ...
Summary: 5 Stars
Ghost Wars is a very well researched account of the events leading up to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11 2001. It illustrates how the attacks were the culmination of the worst failure by the US intelligence community since Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Here is a sobering description of how it was a failure at all phases of the intelligence cycle, from the setting of priorities and tasks, through the gamut of collection activities, to the analytical, assessment and dissemination processes. As the book illustrates, it encompassed not only the traditional national security and military intelligence agencies but also the myriad law enforcement and specialized agencies involved in counter-terrorist activities.
"The opportunities missed by the United States on the way to September 2001 extended well beyond the failure to exploit fully an alliance ...indifference, lassitude, blindness, paralysis, and commercial greed too often shaped American foreign policy in Afghanistan and South Asia during the 1990's." P 570
"Nor did the United States have a strategy for engagement, democratization, secular education, and economic development among the peaceful but demoralized majority populations of the Islamic world. ...In this way America unnecessarily made easier, to at least a small extent, the work of al Qaeda recruiters." P 571
In retrospect, there is much which could and should have been detected before September 11. This is a work that is well worth reading for a better understanding of how we can fix the intelligence and foreign policy issues.