The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda
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 First edition | |
| Author | Peter Bergen |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Political |
| Publisher | Free Press |
Publication date | June 28, 2011 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | |
| ISBN | 978-0-7432-7893-5 |
The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and Al Qaeda is a book written by CNN's Peter Bergen. It was published in 2011 and became a New York Times bestseller.[1]
Bergen’s book covers the events which led up to the September 11 attacks and continues on, concluding with an account of the raid which killed Osama bin Laden. While Bergen’s past works focused more on bin Laden and the rise of Al-Qaeda, The Longest War sheds new light on American actions in the war on terror.
From the outset, Bergen builds a strong case against the incompetence of the George W. Bush administration during the early years of the war, from the failure to capture or kill bin Laden at Tora Bora, to the bungled early days of the Iraq War and the CIA's controversial use of enhanced interrogation techniques that often yielded little beyond what had been gathered using standard approaches. However, Bergen notes that by the end of President Bush’s second term in office, Al-Qaeda’s own strategic failings were causing it to lose Muslim hearts and minds in the Middle East. Indeed, as Bergen puts it, Al-Qaeda’s continued destruction of Muslim lives in the name of jihad, coupled with its inability to morph into a broader movement with any real vision of governance, is its own undoing.