Bin Laden's Legacy: Why We're Still Losing the War on Terror

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Overview

Why al Qaeda is winning its war against the West—and America has been playing right into its hands In the decade since 9/11, the United States has grown weaker: It has been bogged down by costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has spent billions of dollars on security to protect air travel and other transport, as well as the homeland more generally. Much of this money has been channeled into efforts that are inefficient by design and highly bureaucratic, a lack of coordination between and among the government and an array of contractors making it difficult to evaluate the return on the enormous investment that we have made in national security. Meanwhile, public morale has been sapped by measures ranging from color-coded terror alerts to full-body hand searches. Now counterterrorism expert Daveed Gartenstein-Ross details the strategic missteps the U.S. has made in the fight against al Qaeda, a group that U.S. planners never really took the time to understand. For this reason, America's responses to the terrorist threat have often unwittingly helped al Qaeda achieve its goals. Gartenstein-Ross's book explains what the country must do now to stem the bleeding. Explains in detail al Qaeda's strategy to sap and undermine the American economy, and shows how the United States played into the terrorist group's hands by expanding the battlefield and setting up an expensive homeland security bureaucracy that has difficulty dealing with a nimble, adaptive foe Outlines how al Qaeda's economic plans have evolved toward an ultimate "strategy of a thousand cuts," which involves smaller yet more frequent attacks against Western societies Shows how the domestic politicization of terrorism has weakened the United States, skewing its priorities and causing it to misallocate counterterrorism resources Offers a practical plan for building domestic resiliency against terrorist attacks, and escaping the mistakes that have undermined America's war against its jihadist foes Clearly written and powerfully argued by a prominent counterterrorism expert.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781118150955
Publisher:	Trade Paper Press
Publication date:	07/28/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	829 KB

About the Author

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross has been described as "a rising star in the counterterrorism community" by the International Herald Tribune. He is often featured as a speaker at conferences sponsored by prestigious academic institutions, policy institutes, and the U.S. military, and has been called upon as a consultant to deal with problems ranging from hostage negotiations and border security to story development for major media companies. Gartenstein-Ross frequently leads training for the U.S. military and domestic law enforcement and has designed an educational curriculum dealing with terrorism for the U.S. Department of State. His writing has appeared in Foreign Policy, the Atlantic, Reader's Digest, and the Review of Faith and International Affairs, among other publications. He is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Table of Contents

1. Bin Laden Is Dead; His Strategy Lives 1

2. How to Beat a Superpower 15

3. September 11, 2001 33

4. Our Politicized Fight against Terrorism 47

5. Our Inefficient Fight against Terrorism 67

6. The Consequences of the Invasion of Iraq 93

7. One Step Forward 117

8. Two Steps Back 133

9. The War on Oil 153

10. The Thousand Cuts 165

11. A Formidable Adversary 179

12. How to Survive al Qaeda 201

Acknowledgments 233

Notes 237

Index 267

Editorial Reviews

* "A remarkable and laudable work.... In a narrative that somehow manages to be both concise and comprehensive, the author lays out the multiple battlefields and competing strategies of both al Qaeda and the United States.... Gartenstein-Ross brings his rational voice to an irrational world, proposing a set of operating principles to a security-policy machine that has inoculated itself against the very concept." (Foreign Policy)

"Gartenstein-Ross' evaluation of al-Qaeda's strategy, means, and intentions is without equal, as is his analysis of America's missteps during the War on Terror.) (Small Wars Journal)

"Urgent without being alarmist and eminently readable, Bin Laden's Legacy is a testament to Gartenstein-Ross's deep knowledge of his field and his capacity to cut through feeble arguments to lay out only the most salient evidence. His legal training combines neatly with his moderate, academic approach to produce arguments so logical that they seem obvious at first glance; only later does the reader realize this is a fresh read on the past 10 years of counterterrorism efforts. (NDU Press Blog)

From the Publisher