The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001

Rating:
Summary: Get a grip!
Review: Mr. Ahmed has written a conspiratorial digest that purports to expose the hidden-in-plain-sight dimensions of 9/11, which the American public is too deluded to understand due to the corporate media's colonization of our collective neocortex. The book's central thesis is that the evil capitalist empire has finally fallen into the hands of Evangelical and Zionist fascists (the Neocons, et al) who are out to conquer humanity in the name of Texas and Tel Aviv. It so happens that the 9/11 attacks were engineered by the Bush junta, with the possible assistance of Mosaad, in order to justify a massive military expansion into Eurasia. Mr. Ahmed, a young Bangladeshi who was born and raised in the evil empire's land of origin, the U.K. (the former evil empire), is the "executive director" of something called the "Institute for Policy and Research Development," which serves as a platform for malcontent Moslems in the West to rhetorically assault the Christian civilization which gave them a home, an education and the freedom to engage in intellectual dupery.

It is obvious that Mr. Ahmed has spent a great deal of time on Google connecting the dots between articles published in the Guardian with articles published in the New York Times and countless snippets of pseudo-information collected by "internet researchers" (9/11-ologists, if you will). After all of the disparate pieces are strung together, a grotesque mosaic of American treachery and unrivaled murderousness emerges.

Mr. Ahmed correctly points out that there were people within the U.S.'s labyrinthine intelligence communities who had indications of an impending attack on buildings in lower Manhattan by Al-Qaeda. One of the most disturbing claims in the book is that several experienced FBI agents were aware of the 9/11 plot, as confirmed by attorney David Schippers (a Republican Washington insider), yet their investigations were blocked from above and the information they had gathered ended up collecting dust on someone's desk. The book contains some intriguing "facts," many of which probably can be discredited by further investigation. There is no question that 9/11 itself proves the case for criminal negligence at the highest levels of government. However, the leap from gross negligence to complicity by the White House is unsupported by the evidence. My problem with the book is that it reeks of Mr. Ahmed's desire to take that leap thus condemning America and throwing the President into the same history bin as Hitler and Stalin. This kind of trendy paranoia has become common coin among both subversive lefties who hate capitalism and right-wing, New-World-Order types.

A much more sober source of information and analysis concerning 9/11 is America's Secret War by George Friedman. Mr. Friedman, a respected intelligence expert, explains the geopolitical chess game that is taking place between Al-Qaeda and the U.S.. He also provides a lucid narrative of U.S. security paradigms from the Cold War to the present war in Iraq.

Rating:
Summary: War on Freedom the best book I've ever read.
Review: Mr. Ahmed is a brilliant writer. He has made his case successfully and clearly, and backed it up with facts. His documentation and references were excellent and legitimate. A must read book for open minded readers. I hope that Mr. Ahmed won't be co-opted like the rest of the brilliant minds that he criticized!

Rating:
Summary: Good research, poor reasoning
Review: It took me quite a while to work through this book. It's densely packed with referenced material, and it tends to repeat itself time and again. While the quantity of referenced material is impressive, what Mr. Ahmed does with the material is not.

Mr. Ahmed frequently bases conclusions on circumstantial evidence. At times he makes dangerous inferences about US policy or the workings of the US government. Very disputable statements may often be found in this book preceded with "thus," "therefore" or "the fact that." For example, the "fact that" fundamentalism could not have blossomed in Afghanistan and Pakistan without the CIA. That's just one example I grabbed skimming over a random page. There are hundreds of such examples.

Mr. Ahmed's position is extremely biased. Where he can grasp any evidence, however flimsy, that may support his point, he'll present it. For example, in the section "Starving to Death and Waiting to be Killed" he claims the US and Britain's true agenda was to execute a collective punishment strategy against the Afghan people (note this section comes well after he attempts to establish the Americans and Pakistanis are to blame for the 9/11 attacks). He bases this claim on an "admission" from an admiral who used the language "the squeeze will carry on ... until they get the leadership changed." Mr. Ahmed's words are far more colorful, when he asserts that the US "effectively called for the mass slaughter of millions of Afghans." Mr. Ahmed continually equivocates the positions of individuals and American companies to that of the United States. It's notable that the admiral above who confessed to US policy was not even American.

I was quite disappointed in this book. It took a lot of time to work through it, and I had a difficult time assessing the information presented, given the extreme anti-American bias with which it was presented. While I would not recommend this book, if you decide to read it, my advice would be to focus on the extensive research Mr. Ahmed collected and use it, along with other sources, to draw your own conclusions. Consider Mr. Ahmed's statements and conclusions critically (i.e., not with irrational cynicism or acceptance). Ask yourself if more reasonable interpretations of the evidence exist. In the example above, was the British admiral accurately describing US policy? Note that Mr. Ahmed does present evidence to the contrary: a quote from Dick Gephardt indicating that the war was not a strike against the Afghan people. Mr. Ahmed chooses to believe the British admiral, and expounds upon that statement to conclude that the US called for mass slaughter of Afghans. But who is a more reliable source regarding US policy, the US House Minority Leader, or a British admiral? When asking yourself such questions as you read through this book, I think you'll conclude that you need another source.


Rating:
Summary: The best so far.
Review: Powerful, damning, shocking, well researched and indexed.

Ignore the whitewash surrounding the events of 9/11 and look at all the inconsistencies on display in this book.

A thinking person's alternative to Farenheit 911. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: perfect, if you're brainwashed
Review: This book is more propaganda for the USA haters, and articulates their position, that September 11 was, in essence, our fault, and that we deserved it. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK; it will weaken you, convince you that the USA is evil, and ensure the destruction of you and your family through your inability to defend yourselves.