The War Against the Terror Masters: Why It Happened. Where We Are Now. How We'll Win.

by Michael A. Ledeen

The War Against the Terror Masters is a must-read guide to the terrorist crisis. Michael A. Ledeen explains in startling detail how and why the United States was so unprepared for the September 11th catastrophe; the nature of the terror network we are fighting--including the state sponsors of that network; the role of radical Islam; and the enemy collaboration of some of our traditional Middle Eastern "allies";--and, most convincingly, what we must do to win the war.

The War Against the Terror Masters examines the two sides of the the rise of the international terror network, and the past and current efforts of our intelligence services to destroy the terror masters in the U.S. and overseas. Ledeen's new book also visits every country in the Near East and describes the terrorist cancers in each. Among many revelations that will attract wide *How the terror network survived the loss of its main sponsor, the Soviet Union. *How the FBI learned from a KGB defector--twenty years before Osama's bin Laden's murderous assault--of the existance of Arab terrorist sleeper networks inside the United States. *How moralistic guidelines straight-jacketed the FBI from even collecting a file of newspaper clippings on known terror groups operating in America. *How the internal culture of the CIA, and severe limitations on its ability to operate, blinded us to the growth of terror networks. And much more.

Genres: Terrorism

304 pages, Paperback

First published September 10, 2002

About the author

Michael Arthur Ledeen was an American scholar and neoconservative foreign policy analyst. He was a consultant to the United States National Security Council, the United States Department of State, and the United States Department of Defense. He held the Freedom Scholar chair at the American Enterprise Institute where he was a scholar for 20 years, and also held the similarly named chair at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He was very close to Italian politician Antonio Martino. Ledeen was also noted to have done work for Italian intelligence agency SISMI, having received over $100,000 in payment to offshore bank accounts for services including but not limited to training Italian intelligence operatives. Ledeen denied these allegations but admitted that he did do work for SISMI and was paid for it.

Reviews

[Joseph Stieb]

Very weak book. Thinly researched, borderline conspiratorial, and unhinged in terms of its foreign policy recommendations. My review will focus on the themes/ideas related to my research, for which this is actually a valuable primary source.

Ledeen, like many neocons, views the GWOT as a conflict primarily against the state sponsors of terrorism. There's actually little analysis in here of terrorist groups themselves. He focuses on Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and their support for terrorist groups. There really is no "transnational terrorism" for Ledeen; terrorism is a product of state action and sponsorship. This is in large part a holdover mentality from the Cold War, when analysts like Ledeen, especially on the right, described terrorism mainly as a Soviet-orchestrated conspiracy. Ledeen's answer to terrorism is a massively ambitious (I would say reckless) campaign of regime change against these nations. He believes that if the tyrannies are removed, democracy will spring to life in their absence (subsequent history has cast this sunny prediction into doubt). The US doesn't even have to invade; it can back rollback-style uprisings against the regimes, who will apparently fold quite easily. The removal of state-sponsorship will then dry up support, safe havens, etc. for terrorism.

This is a distinct if overlapping argument from many conservatives (and a good number of liberals) who saw the deficit of democracy in the ME as the main cause of terrorism. They, including many in the Bush admin, believed that tyrannies bred terrorism by stifling dissent, denying opportunity, and provoking extremist reactions. Thus, if you could transform ME nations into democracies, that anger would have somewhere to go besides extremism and terrorism. This book is helpful in clarifying the distinction btw these analysis of the roots of terrorism.

One last interesting theme in this book is Ledeen's messianic conception of the US global mission, which he believes is and has always been the eradication of tyranny. Ledeen makes zero effort to think of why any other nation might resent U.S. interference or occupation; we are an essentially innocent nation. He makes simplistic analogies btw the reconstruction of Germany/Japan and the victory in the Cold War to suggest that the U.S. could easily achieve similar results in the ME. He, like most conservatives at the time, believed that terrorists and tyrants hated the United States for what it was, not what it did (the complicated answer is, of course, both). This meant that the US essentially could never escape hostility from these foes and that only regime change could create any kind of modus vivendi. This tight linkage btw terrorism and tyranny, and the deeper "regime-thinking" that accompanies it, is a major theme of the research I hope to carry out in the next few years.

This is a poorly argued, biased, and ideologically blinkered analysis that I'd only read if you are doing some kind of research on neocon/con views of terrorism or the U.S. global role.

[The American Conservative]

'As Ledeen shows, the Italian fascists expressed their desire “to tear down the old order” (his words from 2002) in terms that are curiously anticipatory of a famous statement in 2003 by the Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. In 1932, Asvero Gravelli also divided Europe into “old” and “new” when he wrote, in Towards the Fascist International, “Either old Europe or young Europe. Fascism is the gravedigger of old Europe. Now the forces of the Fascist International are rising.” It all sounds rather prophetic.'

Read the full story, "Flirting with Fascism," on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...

[Stephen]

This is an insightful look into the history of terrorism, how it was pulled together an better organized, and the effects lasting into the post 9/11 era. The book originally was released to the public in 2002, so there have been many developments since then. However, it is a great look at the beginnings of the post 9/11 era.