Book Review: The Longest War by Peter Bergen

Peter Bergen is a national security analyst for CNN who made his name by producing the first television interview with Osama Bin Laden in 1997, and who has previously authored books two books on Al Qaeda: Holy War Inc., a 2001 study of Al Qaeda, and The Osama Bin Laden I Knew a collection of personal accounts of Bin Laden by people who had been close to him at various point in their life. Now, nearly ten years into the War on Terror, Bergen has produced by far the best one volume account of the conflict between America and Al Qaeda, condensing into one book a level of detail and analysis which you would have previously had to have read 10 books to imbibe.

From the first moment you open the book it is clear that Bergen is no instant-expert on Al Qaeda, his many years following the group really does show with the sheer amount of research he brings to the table. I bought the Kindle version, and the footnotes to the book take up about 30-40% of the total size of the book. This is a book which has not been entered into lightly, it is a labour of love which has taken him many years to complete.

He starts with a very short history of September 11, 2001, and how we got to that point. To anyone who has read Holy War Inc., much of this will be very familiar. Peter Bergen is very level-headed in assessing the steps which took us to 9/11 and the motivations of those who committed the atrocities. He judges the actions of various individuals without being preachy, all too many books about Al Qaeda are badly disguised political partisan hackery. My main gripe, though it was a small one, with this section, was how he conceives of the motivations for Al Qaeda's attacks on the United States. He paraphrases Bin Laden, seemingly in agreement that "it was U.S. foreign policy in the Muslim world that was the reason al-Qaeda is attacking America". I think this is rather misleading when stated so bluntly. U.S. foreign policy, and resentment of it, of course, should be given careful attention when assessing the motivations of members of Al Qaeda. It should not, however, be taken at face value at the exclusion of other very important issues and ideas within the group. It is impossible to assess the motivations of Al Qaeda and its' members without finding a place for their radical conception of a future, pure Islamic state, governed along the strict lines of Sharia law (as they interpret it). Ignoring this central desire of Al Qaeda means that any assessment of their motivations is likely to confuse means and ends. The means Al Qaeda is employing to meet their ends are attacks on the United States. They feel that by attacking the United States they can inflame a global Muslim uprising and force a withdrawal of the United States from the region which will lead to their desired ends. Al Qaeda ends are the removal of any foreign influence in the Arab and Muslim world, the removal of the "apostate" rulers, and the creation of an Islamic caliphate which will enforce strict Sharia in the style of the Taliban and embark upon an expansionist jihadist foreign policy, expanding the influence of Islam until the world world submits to Islam and says "āʾilāhaʾillallāh, Muḥammad rasūlu-llāh" ("There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his Prophet"). This is their totalitarian desire, and I would wager that this desire would inflame a small number of young, discontented Muslims, whether the US was supporting Israel and or not. Revanchism and a pining for the mythical glory days of past Islamic empires has deep roots, and while the Arab and Muslim world is in such a malaise, it will occur regardless of American foreign policy. I would argue that even if the United States was not following the foreign policies that Bin Laden decries, even if it was an entirely benevolent power, it would still have been attacked due to its power and influence in the region. Bin Laden realizes that the United States is the foremost enemy of his conception of a pure, united Islamic Caliphate. He recognizes that if this utopian goal is to be realized, then American influence in the region must be removed, and without that vital precondition, his efforts will be in vain.

That is not to say that the United States' foreign policy has no effect on this totalitarian movement at all. Clearly, many Muslims have been been inflamed by American actions in Iraq, support for Israel, support for brutal tyrants like the now-toppled Mubarak, and so on, and removing those grievances would go a long way to losing support and recruits for the jihadists, but we should not focus on American foreign policy to the exclusion of all else. Unfortunately, I feel Bergen gets the balance wrong in his book, and should have concentrated far more on the totalitarian religious utopianism in Al Qaeda's thinking, but it is only a minor gripe in such an excellent book.

From 9/11 we move quickly to the response by the Bush administration and the battle for Afghanistan. One of the best aspects of Bergen's book is his documentation of Al Qaeda's strategic thinking when fighting the war and the developments that it took. He shows the fracture within the jihadist community and Al Qaeda itself over the 9/11 operation. Bin Laden, informed by the ineffectual cruise missile strikes of the Clinton era, as well as the Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia withdrawals, felt that America was a paper tiger, which, if only hit hard enough, would be forced to withdraw from the region. At best, he felt that America would launch another ineffective attack on Afghanistan which he could survive, while bleeding the Americans until they withdrew. He was told by other members of the jihadist community that he was underestimating America, and that attacks like 9/11 would bring disaster on Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and everything they had built. Bin Laden was wrong it turned out, and the dissenters were right. Some analysts of Al Qaeda have developed the idea that what Bush did in Afghanistan is exactly what Bin Laden wanted him to do. Bergen destroys this thesis. Al Qaeda was absolutely smashed by the response to 9/11, in a way they did not plan for, did not foresee and most certainly did not want. They lost many of their members, now either in body bags or in orange jump-suits, lost their safe haven in Afghanistan, and lost in the Taliban what remains the only Sunni Muslim state run along the lines prescribed by Al Qaeda. Only a fool could describe such a disaster as a victory for Al Qaeda. Bergen, using an immense weight of evidence has put such claims to rest.

From here we move on to the by, now familiar territory of the Bush administrations failures. Tora Bora, Guantanamo, the PATRIOT Act, extraordinary renditions, "enhanced interrogations", the "with us or against us" Manichean mentality of the Bushies, the failure to reconstruct and secure Afghanistan and so on. All of it many will have read before, but Bergen does it with such flair, and such depth of research, that it's an absolute pleasure to walk through this familiar landscape again.

Bergen's assessment of Iraq I found to be rather flat in many ways. Bergen was against the invasion, felt it would be a diversion from the fight with Al Qaeda, and would be a huge victory for Al Qaeda, reviving them when they were on the point of defeat. I agree with his assessment to an extent, but I felt that he conformed to the anti-Iraq line a little too much, and without question. He doesn't raise any of the difficult questions surrounding the intentions of Saddam Hussein with regards to WMD, or the possibility of the failure of containment, or the moral costs of leaving Saddam in power, or the possibility that Iraq could have fallen apart without an invasion anyway. I don't have a problem with his opposition to the war, I have very mixed feelings on the decision to invade myself, but I think he skirts round some very difficult questions in this section, without giving them a proper go. Redeeming himself excellently, however, his sections on the surge are absolutely excellent, and the part of the book I enjoyed reading the most. He does not allow his opposition to the invasion to cloud his thinking on how the war should best be ended, quoting approvingly the words of Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen: "Just because you invade a country stupidly doesn't mean you have to leave it stupidly." Anti-war protesters - take note of these fine words.

The last sections of his book were dedicated to the continuing war with Al Qaeda, the possibility of its termination and the war in Afghanistan. Bergen has been an passionate advocate of the NATO/ISAF effort in Afghanistan and the need to combat Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and in the tribal frontiers of the Pakistani mountains. I always sense a genuine streak of humanitarianism and concern for the Afghan people when Bergen talks or writes about the war in Afghanistan and the fight against terrorism and the Taliban there. He poignantly identifies the main problem with the arguments of opponents of the Obama counter-insurgency plans: we have tried the alternatives before, and they were disastrous. We have tried before the anti-war stance of simply "leaving Afghanistan alone". We did it in the 1990s after the Soviet withdrawal - it led to a disastrous civil war, the rise of the Taliban and an unspeakable humanitarian crisis for the people of Afghanistan. We have also tried the "counter-terrorism plus" strategy advocated by so-called realists like Stephen Walt, and Vice President Joe Biden. We tried that after the invasion of late 2001, and this light-footprint strategy also ended in disaster, with a reinvigorated Taliban insurgency. Obama's proposal of a troops surge and a long-term investment in the country may be messy, costly and time-consuming, but it is the only real chance we have, as Bergen makes clear, of reconstructing Afghanistan and making sure it does not again become a source of regional chaos and a safe haven for the worst kinds of terorrists.

Despite some relatively minor criticisms of certain parts of his book, Bergen has written an astounding book, which will be read for years to come. I cannot imagine a better book being written on this period for the foreseeable future, and when the histories are written in decades to come, Bergen's book is undoubtedly going to be a very important reference point.