Brilliant oral history of the world's most notorious terrorist. The advantage of oral history is that makes events seem more human and understanding - its full of believable touches, such as Osama's kids playing ninetendo in Aghanistan caves, the writing of Jihad magazine, Osama relaxing by horseriding and playing soccer, the various factions in the organisation, the delight Osama has in appearing on television.
Reading it you're struck by several things:
(a) how America misrepresent the battle against terrorism by saying "they hate our freedom" - which they don't, they hate their foreign policy with regards to the middle east
(b) how the basis of the battle isn't all about America, that's a side show - the crux is secular vs religious governments in the Muslim world, which is why so many Muslim countries are anti-Osama (and why it was silly to attack secular Iraq, whose leader Saddam Hussein was hated by Osama - indeed, Osama asked to take part in kicking him out of Kuwait) - America are dragged into it mostly as a key ally of secular governments
(c) the major, major problem with secular governments is that they are almost always oppressive and dictatorial, thus depriving any opponents of their regime of a peaceful means of challenging said regime - so they turn to violence. The irony is you have the American republicans, who have a massive religious base, supporting secular governments, who are fighting a religious base. The solution to so many problems in the world (not all but many) is democracy - if people had a way of protesting and changing government peacefully, they'd be doing that instead of heading to the hills.
I admit I did find the first section more interesting, maybe because Osama becomes more of a shadowy background figure as the book goes on, with others taking over and becoming more interesting, active characters.
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