US Intel Incompetence Tops Al Qaeda Bumbling in The Looming Tower

How can a group of blundering, nomadic, social misfits pull off the greatest terror atrocity in history? It’s easy when the good guys stay busy defeating themselves. Such is the message of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright.

Mr. Wright’s thoroughly exhaustive tome moves crisply through the histories of the Al-Qaeda players, their success and failures, the valiant attempts by under-resourced FBI maverick John O’Neill, and the systemic, bureaucratic incompetence in US intel agencies that opened the door to 9/11.

Ironically, ultra-violent Al-Qaeda drew inspiration from a prim, bookish man named Sayyid Qutb. Qutb, who actually lived in the US during the 1940’s, was struck by the licentiousness, superficiality, and spiritual vacuity he experienced here:

“Qutb saw a spiritual wasteland, yet belief in God was nearly unanimous in the United States at the time. It was easy to misled by the proliferation of churches, religious books, and religious festivals, Qutb maintained: the fact remained that materialism as the real American god.”

This is a common theme through the book: young Muslims being radicalized in the West. Perhaps this insight can help answer the question lefty’s bray about all the time: “why do they hate us“: maybe it’s because our collective spiritual life is so vapid and unsatisfying. However, religious chauvinism and cultural envy might have something to do with it as well.

(more…)