By Steven Emerson
September 11, 2001, will live in infamy, but February 26, 1993, should also cause Americans to shudder. On that day 15 years ago, Islamic militants tried to topple the World Trade Center; six people in the building were killed, over a thousand injured. It was the first time the world network of Islamic terrorists had struck on American soil. Most Americans missed the message.
Andrew McCarthy's Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad is a comprehensive, meticulous, and impassioned reminder of that message. As lead prosecutor in one of the most notorious terrorism cases in U.S. history, no one is better equipped than McCarthy to recount the details of the ensuing trial that condemned Islamist kingpin Omar Abdel Rahman to a lifetime in a supermax prison. Equal parts historian, storyteller, and prophet, McCarthy relates the case's background magnificently. He begins with a penetrating history of the jihad movement: its origins in the Afghan-Soviet war, the CIA's involvement in fostering an environment that in turn spawned al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups, and the policy failures and institutional incompetence of our government, which eventually allowed a terrorist cell led by Rahman, the Egyptian "blind sheik," to conduct the recruitment, planning, and training for a major attack right here on our shores. Read more ...
September 11, 2001, will live in infamy, but February 26, 1993, should also cause Americans to shudder. On that day 15 years ago, Islamic militants tried to topple the World Trade Center; six people in the building were killed, over a thousand injured. It was the first time the world network of Islamic terrorists had struck on American soil. Most Americans missed the message.
Andrew McCarthy's Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad is a comprehensive, meticulous, and impassioned reminder of that message. As lead prosecutor in one of the most notorious terrorism cases in U.S. history, no one is better equipped than McCarthy to recount the details of the ensuing trial that condemned Islamist kingpin Omar Abdel Rahman to a lifetime in a supermax prison. Equal parts historian, storyteller, and prophet, McCarthy relates the case's background magnificently. He begins with a penetrating history of the jihad movement: its origins in the Afghan-Soviet war, the CIA's involvement in fostering an environment that in turn spawned al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups, and the policy failures and institutional incompetence of our government, which eventually allowed a terrorist cell led by Rahman, the Egyptian "blind sheik," to conduct the recruitment, planning, and training for a major attack right here on our shores. Read more ...
Source: Claremont Review of Books
 |
Posts
