What I Read (sometimes) III

I finished reading "The Looming Tower" recently . . . (It's one of those books that one reads where he can't learn v'dal)



The Looming Tower recounts the formation of the Anti-American sentiments amongst radical Islamic groups -starting with Sayyid Qutb in the Forties, and moving on to the formative years of Al-Zawahiri and Bin Ladin . . .



Here we learn:

• What served as the catalysts turning Osama from a young Anti-Communist revolutionary to an international Terrorist.
• How the Clinton Administration was offered Osama by Sudanese Government, but chose not to take them up on their offer.
• How Al-Zalwahiri toured America under a Pseudonym in order to make contacts for future Al-Qaeda cells.
• That due to rivalry, bureaucratic tape, and tragic miscommunication between the FBI and CIA key information towards apprehending the terrorists was withheld.
  
  
• How the one man with the initiative to stop Osama met his own tragic demise in the World Trade Center.

Here we also see the key behind Osama's strategy -make the Ameircan giant bleed a little, and it will run away.



The Torah, when discussing the speech of the Mashuach Milchama, the Kohen who would lead the Jewish people into war, states very clearly that the beginning of defeat is flight. When we run away now from the insurgent attacks and try to make 'peace' with terrorists we are only further validating their beliefs. Only by being strong and doing what is right, ending Terror, and not what is Politically correct, can we win.



In our own lives we are supposed to view ourselves as a microcosm, a reflection of the Macrocosm -the world at large. When faced with the terror of the Yetzer Hora, the evil inclination, the key is not give in -to make peace talks, to run away, to be PC- but rather to strong firm in the path of G-d's Torah.







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