An End to Al-Qaeda: Destroying bin Laden's Jihad and Restoring America's Honor

This is a great book. Why? Well, it offers advice on how to combat Al Qaeda , but without all the liberal or conservative politics. Rather, it is just good old common sense that finds expression in this book. The liberals have a way to fight Al Qaeda, as well the conservatives. Often neither side gets the whole picture down before the can start the petty squabbling. This author is free of the problem, and as a result is able to lay down a solution that is accessible. Get this and learn how to fight the enemy.

Nance's authoritative and well-documented thesis offers humanity a long-awaited wonder weapon for defeating Al Qaeda. Dismissing the generational struggle envisioned by militarists, Nance optimistically observes that Al Qaeda's global insurgency can be terminated on the ideological battlefield within two years. Considering that Osama bin Laden's movement depends primarily on the strength of its ideals to rally supporters, an information operation to dissuade these adherents appears to be the key to vanquishing Al Qaeda. While standard counterinsurgency doctrine emphasizes the importance of winning the battle for hearts and minds, the Bush administration ignored this arena in favor of a belligerent approach that inflamed anti-American sentiment. As a result, six years after 9/11 the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate classified Al Qaeda's anti-American insurgency "as strong as ever". Nance wisely advises us to abandon the reckless course chartered by Bush in favor of a strategy that destroys Al Qaeda's popular support. Instead of an open-ended and costly military commitment, we need to convince the Muslims who willingly support Al Qaeda's war that the group is far more dangerous to them than its avowed enemies. By hijacking the agendas of anti-imperialism and Islamic revivalism, Al Qaeda's leadership has sought to deceive the Muslim world into supporting a death cult that actually aims to destroy Islam. Once Muslims understand that Bin Laden's network represents the greatest threat to them, self interest will compel former supporters to provide the intelligence and local militias necessary for dismantling the stateless global network. Having reframed the 9/11 War as a battle of ideas, Nance recommends that we vilify the Al Qaeda high command as a deviant cult bent on rewriting the Islamic faith. In direct contradiction to the professed beliefs of over 95% of the Muslim world, Al Qaeda advocates a puritanical theocracy based on offensive holy war, seventh-century Arabian social norms and the subjugation of the vast majority of the human population. Along with other leading exposes into Al Qaeda's ideology, such as Raymond Ibrahim's "The Al Qaeda Reader" (Broadway, 2007), Nance provides persuasive evidence about this nefarious agenda that can serve as a pillar for the proposed information operation to unveil Al Qaeda's true nature. Nance's provocative thesis elicits the crucial question: What is Al Qaeda's ultimate goal? Does Bin Laden's grand design end with the destruction of America and Israel? Or are these events intended to serve as the foundation for an Islamic empire led by Al Qaeda's high command? Or does the megalomaniac who started the 9/11 War pursue an even more ambitious agenda? A growing body of counterterrorism experts contend that Al Qaeda is in fact a millennialist cult that aims to provoke the Apocalypse War predicted to kill billions of people. By engineering this conflict while concealing its own monstrous

If you want to really understand Al-Qaida's mindset, goals and a radical, dramatic way to break them, buy An End to Al Qaeda. It is a brilliant book that won't disappoint if you actually read it. I have done technical research in the Middle East on Al-Qaida terrorists for a couple of books on the group so I requested and got an advanced copy. This was the single best book I have seen that clearly explains how Al-Qaida terrorists recruits and teaching their members to love death. It's from a guy who actually has to deal with the terrorists and on that level I think it's equal to Marc Sageman's Understanding Terrorists Networks. It's easily more readable than most scholarly works but is still a serious analysis. Lots of books superficially detail how the Al-Qaida works virtually but none lay out a strategy to deal with them other than killing, killing, killing. It is universally recognized that American war policy only raises the numbers of terrorists, not reduce them. This book is not one of these. Nance's thesis is that Al-Qaida is engaged in a strategic war to destroy traditional Islam and create a new caliphate. They capitalize on American policy errors as a recruitment tool. Those are givens, but he is one of the few terrorism experts to define them as an armed terrorist cult like Aum Shinrikyo, Jim Jones's People's Temple or the Branch Davidians. Framed that way, and not as noble Islamic fighters. he believes they can be quickly defeated by breaking their spiritual link to Islam and so losing all Muslim support. It also introduces a the radical idea that Islam is under direct attack by al-Qaida's cult members. He contends that the Muslim world should be offered America's assistance particularly in a counter-ideology campaign to discredit Bin Laden's ideas. Mr. Nance gives a large base of well sourced historical evidence (the Quran being one of his principle sources), going back to the beginnings of Islam that show this group is exactly what hundreds of Muslim scholars have been saying since 9/11. Islamic scholars have been insisting for nearly a decade that Al-Qaida are not Muslims and their actions are un-Islamic as their principle victims are Muslims, not Americans. Nance recognizes these denunciations and gives them a fair hearing. He also shows there have been three other Islamic cults and Bin laden is copying the behaviors of one of the most radical, the Kharajites of the 13th century. The author shows Al-Qaida's own dogma demands that Islam must be changed by adding two new pillars (Suicide Martyrdom and Holy War forever) and bringing all Muslims into a new Islamic Caliphate. Bin Laden eventually foresees an apocalyptic global showdown between Islam and Democracy. Al Qaida has to defeat traditional Islam and change it first. I thought this argument was excellent, and Bin Laden's own words support it dramatically. Nance's writing makes it patently obvious that is their plan and that they may be succeeding. The b

Who writes those editorial reviews at PW?? They are hogwash! An End to Al Qaeda is a superb book for all those who want an alternative strategy to never ending military operations. It comes from a surprising advocate. There is no arguing that Malcolm Nance is a career field intelligence officer who encourages destroying Al Qaeda ideologically by winning on "the battlefield of the mind and soul." He is strong in his convictions on that point and his preachiness is just what is needed. The book proposes a strategy of focusing both western and Moslem soft and hard power on counter-ideology operations (he calls the campaign by the name "CIRCUIT BREAKER") versus military power only. It is a change in counterterrorism thinking that should be applauded. In fact, it is really a timely idea. The attempted Detroit Christmas bombing brought the author's call for wide waging "counter-ideological warfare" from the shadows and directly into articles in the New York Times and Time magazine. Thomas Friedman wrote about it as well, but in an off hand way. The most controversial aspect of the book is the author's contention that Al Qaeda attacks the West to find recruits to fight a civil war against traditional Islam. He stands in good company as the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA believe the same. Many authors, journalists and experts have referred to Al Qaeda as cult but few have shown that this phenomenon has occurred three times before in Islam. The author connects the dots well and reveals the key philosophers and ideologues who lead bin Laden to create his hypnotic doctrine. The global organizational doctrine that makes its recruits so irreconcilable as to require their physical destruction or incarceration is presented clearly. Their love of death is explained in depth. It reveals why their suicide bombers relish the terror they inflict. It's a well sourced book that reveals the exact methods of bin Laden's corruption and explains why we need to help defend Islam from them. It is an analysis that will clarify and illuminate the reader of the deeply apocalyptic strategic vision of Osama bin Laden. Ignore PW and the rest who want to drown a good idea before its born.

An End to Al Qaeda is an intelligent and thoughtful book, to be read with an open and adult mind. In fact, this book should be on the President's desk. Malcolm Nance, a veteran intelligence operative convincingly flips the entire frame of reference on the war on terrorism in such a way that, if adopted, could really help end the war on Al Qaeda with a surprising path to victory. The book is most controversial in that Mr. Nance challenges the past approaches on a war on terror - which obviously does not work. Unfortunately, for many, accepting Nance's thesis would be admitting that we were wrong all these years. Worse, one would have to admit that the Islamic world, not America, is the present victim of Bin Laden's insane goals. The book convincingly changes the way the reader understands what Al Qaeda really is (a cult), what its goals really are (destroying traditional Islam and establishing a radical Moslem super state) and how America can help the Moslem world cure the cancer that eats away through generations of young men once and (one would hope) for all. Is the book's idea of creating a hybrid military/intelligence agency to defend traditional Islam while invoking an ideological war within Al Qaeda controversial? Absolutely. But not as controversial as reporter Thomas Friedman's recent call for an armed Islamic civil war. This book actually offers a viable plan that relies on not only precise military action but also defeating the religious rational behind their love of death. Some of his facts cannot be denied when you read the evidence presented in the book: Al Qaeda is obviously a cult - with nothing Islamic about it - and its real goal is first to gain control of Islam, not just the destruction of America (at least not now). I enjoyed the book. It is highly detailed and I applaud Mr. Nance's courage - he is going to need it. He certainly has the street credibility and media reach to make the case on an international stage but it goes against all mainstream thinking of the war on terror. Conservatives will hate and ridicule it as he spells out repeatedly that Bush counterterrorism policies helped Al Qaeda immensely. In the end, Malcolm Nance opens a debate that should seriously take place if we want to solve once and for all the Al Qaeda problem.