USA TODAY International Edition
Chilling tally of ‘ The Terror Years’
Lawrence Wright examines the roots and reverberations
Few American writers understand the phenomenon of Islam-based terrorism better than writer Lawrence Wright, whose 2006 book The Looming Tower comprehensively detailed the rise of al- Qaeda from its roots in the Muslim Brotherhood to the 9/ 11 attacks.
Wright has returned in The Terror Years: From al- Qaeda to
the Islamic State ( Knopf, 350 pp., out of four), a collection of his reporting for The New Yorker, which again demonstrates Wright’s knowledge of what is unfortunately the national security challenge of our time.
While The Looming Tower was a feast of knowledge about al- Qaeda, The Terror Years is more like a tasting menu of Wright’s reporting on different elements of the terrorism that has altered the world’s politics and attitudes toward security.
The collection, though published over a period of more than 10 years, maintains a thematic strength that merits its placement alongside The Looming
Tower. Each story shows how the Muslim world and the West have struggled with the challenges posed by terrorist groups and the religious impulses believed to guide them.
Wright’s reporting glides from the life and career of former FBI agent John O’Neill, whose antiterrorism work ended in the wreckage of the World Trade Center towers on 9/ 11, to FBI agent Ali Soufan, who fought the use of interrogation techniques that many consider torture. Each story is a densely packed nugget of information enhanced by Wright’s clear and sharp writing.
His conclusions also sting. “The 2003 invasion of Iraq by U. S. and coalition partners stands as one of the greatest blunders in American history,” Wright writes. “The Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, rose out of the the chaos, throwing the region into turmoil that hasn’t been equaled since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.”
In “Five Hostages,” Wright tells the story of five American families whose children were captured by ISIL and how they struggled to get them released with the help of U. S. media entrepreneur David Bradley, whose company publishes The Atlantic. The cases of James Foley, Theo Padnos, Steven Sotloff, Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller showed the virulent spread of ISIL and the “feckless” limitations of the U. S. government when it came to freeing the captured Americans or haplessly watching them die.
Foley’s videotaped execution by decapitation, broadcast around the world, highlighted the scope of ISIL’s depravity and galvanized the United States and its allies into what has been a two- year military campaign against the terrorist group. Read now, Wright’s article seems almost quaint; the fears of ISIL have metastasized as the group inspired mass attacks in Brussels, Paris and Nice, France.
The United States and its allies, Wright writes, will inevitably defeat ISIL, because all terrorist groups eventually lose. But he fears the cost of success.
“This age of terror will end one day, but whether our society can restore the feeling of freedom that once was our birthright is hard to predict,” he concludes. The failure to remember what we were as a nation before 9/ 11 will mean “we may never steer in that direction again. In that case, the terrorists really will have won.”