Bruce Riedel
Bruce Riedel uses his thirty years of intelligence and policymaking experience to outline in-depth and comprehensive profiles of Al-Qaeda’s core operatives as well as a sketch of the organization as a whole in The Search for Al Qaeda. His “know your enemy” approach analyzes the aspirations, vulnerabilities, strengths, and weaknesses of the United States’ number one enemy in the ‘War on Terror’.
Riedel opens each of his colorful biographies with an (often contrived) personal anecdote to demonstrate his own knowledge of Ayman al-Zawahiri “The Thinker”, Osama bin-Laden “The Knight”, Mullah Omar “The Host”, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi “The Stranger”. While his character profiles are indeed well‑researched, it is perhaps the broader implications that these profiles have on the terrorist organization that are riper for discussion.
One of Riedel’s more debatable claims is that Al-Qaeda’s primary motivation for orchestrating September 11th was to goad the United States into a “bleeding war” in Afghanistan. Essentially, Riedel writes that bin Laden and Zawahiri learned from their experience fighting the Soviet Fourtieth Army that they could bring an empire to its knees by fighting asymmetric warfare on their own turf. Riedel writes that on September 9th, 2001, Osama bin Laden repaid Mullah Omar for all his help by killing his number one enemy, the military leader of the Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Massoud. Riedel then extrapolates that:
The timing was critical. Bin Laden fully expected an American attack after 9/11 and wanted to remove the Northern Alliance’s leader and thus weaken it before any such retaliation might come. This move indicates that the primary intention of the Manhattan Raid was to provoke an American invasion of Afghanistan.
Again, Riedel’s conclusion may very well be true, however he doesn’t consider the possibility that the assassination of Massoud may not indicate that AQ wanted the US to invade Afghanistan; rather, the strategy may have been to prepare a hornet’s nest for the inevitable invasion of Afghanistan. Riedel’s analysis may be true, but it also runs counter to the argument that one of AQ’s primary motivations is to see the United States pull out troops from the Middle East, not increase them.
Another of Riedel’s contentious claims is that the Taliban and the Al Qaeda core operatives were saved when the US “took its eyes off the ball” when it decided to invade Iraq. While there is little doubt among experts and policymakers with the benefit of hindsight that the Iraq war served as a distraction from the broader ‘War on Terror’, Riedel’s analysis may exaggerate the extent. In particular, Riedel seems to fall on the side of the debate that the Al Qaeda core was almost in the grasp of the CIA before the Iraq invasion. He even quotes Pakistan’s ambassador the US, “We had almost licked al-Qa’ida after 9/11 because of the US invasion of Afghanistan.” Proving that they were “almost in the grasp of the CIA” when they weren’t “licked” in the one and a half years between the two invasions is a difficult endeavor indeed.
Nonetheless, as Riedel points out, “understanding Al Qaeda’s ideology is the first key to defeating the group,” and his book goes a long way in deepening this understanding. The point becomes clearer when one considers that during the Cold War, “dozens of institutions of higher learning devoted considerable effort to studying the Soviet system and understanding Marxism.” The author makes a strong case that “a similar effort is needed to defeat jihadism.”