Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Foreword by Judge Baltasar Garzón Real
- List of Participants
- PART I AL QAEDA AFTER 9/11 THE NEW FACE OF TERRORISM
- 1 Al Qaeda Then and Now
- 2 Who Joins al Qaeda?
- 3 Al Qaeda in Europe: Today's Battlefield
- 4 Militant Islam: On the Wane or on the Rise?
- 5 The United States vs. al Qaeda: A Progress Report
- 6 Al Qaeda's Media Strategy
- 7 The Real Twin Towers: Al Qaeda's Influence on Saudi Arabia and Pakistan
- PART II IN HIS OWN WORDS: STATEMENTS BY OSAMA BIN LADEN
- Index
5 - The United States vs. al Qaeda: A Progress Report
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Foreword by Judge Baltasar Garzón Real
- List of Participants
- PART I AL QAEDA AFTER 9/11 THE NEW FACE OF TERRORISM
- 1 Al Qaeda Then and Now
- 2 Who Joins al Qaeda?
- 3 Al Qaeda in Europe: Today's Battlefield
- 4 Militant Islam: On the Wane or on the Rise?
- 5 The United States vs. al Qaeda: A Progress Report
- 6 Al Qaeda's Media Strategy
- 7 The Real Twin Towers: Al Qaeda's Influence on Saudi Arabia and Pakistan
- PART II IN HIS OWN WORDS: STATEMENTS BY OSAMA BIN LADEN
- Index
Summary
KAREN GREENBERG
There is a metaphor for the current circumstances in which the United States finds itself. And that is this: when someone takes a photograph of you and you see it and say, “I don't like that photograph.” Then, six months later, you look at it and you say, “Oh, you know, I actually looked a little younger then. I looked much better than I do now!” That is how I would describe the sensibility of living in the U.S. right now. However unpleasant the picture looks to me in any given moment, subsequent facts turn out to be even less palatable, less something we want to associate with ourselves and our culture.
Every three or six months, if you stop and ask where we are, we know one thing – we're in a less good place. We are finding out more about the failures in Iraq, more about the widespread use of torture, more about the secrecy and deception on the home front. What we are left with is the question, “Wasn't it better back then, before we knew?” In terms of thinking about today, the real question in our minds ought to be, “What will it look like in a year?”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Al Qaeda NowUnderstanding Today's Terrorists, pp. 89 - 111Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005