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Book Reviews: Comparative Politics
Fawaz Gerges argues with a powerful and convincing voice that al-Qaeda does not provide a meaningful threat anymore, more than a decade after the attacks of 9/11/2001. Al-Qaeda only continues to loom large in the imagination of Western policy makers and publics because of a combination of cultural, economic and political factors inherent to the West. It also only continues to replenish its thinned ranks because of the resentment produced by damaging American policies, including the use of drone attacks. Making al-Qaeda appear significant through words and actions, Gerges argues, creates a self-fulfilled prophecy.
The book includes many valuable contributions. One is its interesting synopsis of the debates among the leaders of the Arab ansar (a better term for the so-called Afghan Arabs that many authors, including Gerges, use) after the Soviet defeat about the direction that the jihad should take (fighting dictators in Muslim lands, liberating Palestine, pushing further towards Moscow, or fighting the United States). Another is its illustration of the complicated relationship between al-Qaeda and the Taliban (Chapter 1). The book also contextualizes the very important argument made earlier by Michael Scheuer in his own books that al-Qaeda's strategy was to provoke the US to embroil itself in long conflicts in the Muslim World that would lead to draining the US economy and, subsequently, its demise as a superpower that bolsters tyrants, supports Israel's violence against the Palestinians and other Arabs, and hinders the advancement of Muslims more broadly.
The book shines in the second part of Chapter 3, where Gerges describes the critique of Osama Bin-Laden's attack on American civilians by other proponents, or previous proponents, of jihad in Egypt. While this book only occasionally relies on original research (most of its narrative is based on journalistic and official publications),...