Recommend: No<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This review takes the form of an interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cait: Declan, what book have you most recently read? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dek: I read The Looming Tower. The Road to 9\/11 by Lawrence Wright. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cait: What made you pick up this book? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dek: There’s a company called Palantir (editor: Palantir is a software company that deals in analysing data to help companies and governments solve problems) and supposedly for their new grads they get them to read three books. This was one, there was another one called improv, about theatre and another on something to do with systems. It was unclear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cait: Why was this the book? Why did you choose it out of those three?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dek: It was by far the easiest to find. The others seemed more abstract and less of a bedtime read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cait: Were you concerned about the length of this book? When you picked it up? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dek: No, it was long. I think it was like 500ish pages. But it feels like a topic that has some weight and background to it and it didn’t feel overly long to read. At least 100 pages of it at the end were references and endnotes that I skipped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cait: Please tell me how this book approached the events of 9\/11. What was the motivation for writing the book? Was it purely factual or was their personal story involved as well?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dek: So you asked a lot of questions there. The approach is strictly chronological. It started with the beginning of modern radical Islam, pre-World War II I think and then just traced it up chronologically from there. It ends on the 9\/11 itself. It doesn’t describe in detail the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cait: Oh, are you disappointed that it didn’t go into the actual event itself? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dek: I was as first, it almost feels anti-climatic, but thinking back on it, the scope of the book was clear and this approach works. It’s the road to 9\/11, the actual event itself at that point is pre-ordained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cait: But aren’t people mainly interested in the actual event itself and how catastrophic it is or do you think that’s the point of this book is to say that there are more important things than the catastrophe?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dek: I don’t think they are more important. I think it’s just focusing on a certain aspect of it. Focusing on the event itself and how it actually unfolded on the day doesn’t help you understand like what led up to it and how it occurred. It’s more interested in the questions of: how does radical Islam form, how did Al-Qaeda form, what was the role of the different parties, how did that unfurl? Importantly, and this is kind of key reason I think why Palantir gets people to read it, why was U.S intelligence unable to prevent it? What were the indicators and how were they not captured?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cait: That’s a classic conspiracy theory, isn’t it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dek: Yeah, the book doesn’t delve into from a conspiracy theory perspective, it’s not interested in that. It’s more interested in how was the risk not properly understood. The markers were there if you knew where to look. But like any complex system there’s a lot of data and sorting the signal from the noise is the challenge. Then there is the human element for the departments involved, everyone protects their own team and scope of work, not that different to any office job. Breaking all that down is Palantir’s ball game and so I can see why it is on their reading list. Consolidating that data into something actionable is difficult. And that’s what kind of comes out of this book. There’s a lot of things going on all the time and people weren’t tracking this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cait: Did you have any preconceptions of Islamic culture before this book that this book changed or reinforced?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dek: I think I’m willing to acknowledge there is a lot about Islam I don’t understand. I think I was probably going in understanding that I was mostly blind. I had enough context to understand the places, some people and the main groups. But I think one thing this book really clarified for me is the emergence of radical Islam and how that’s a much more modern thing in some ways than I expected. There’s a lot of complexity, there’s not just Islam, there’s a whole different sub categories and people with slightly different beliefs and interpretations. And that’s even before you start adding on a political layer that wraps around the whole thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cait: Where were you when 9\/11 happened?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dek: I was maybe six or seven. I was obviously asleep during the actual event, it happened in midnight in Australia. I remember going to the morning and Cheez TV was replaced with rolling news footage <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cait: Yeah, I couldn’t quite understand what could cause Cheez TV to break from its normal routine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cait: Do you think this book is important in broadening perspectives, or is it more recommended for people with an interest in foreign policy? Are you learning something generally applicable here or is it very specific to say policy and politics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dek: I think the thing it conveyed it was more generally well was the complexity in the Middle East. You hear a lot about it right in recent modern contexts around Iraq and Afghanistan now and Iran. There’s all these different countries it’s unclear from my perspective often what are the different roles? Like what is the difference between Jordan and Qatar. Who’s on whose team in what context and how does it change? Who’s pro-American and how much? This book really conveys that there’s a lot of complexity there. It’s not a black and white scenario at all. So I think that’s good. I don’t come away with any amazing understanding or sympathy for any particular group you just understand there is nuance and complexity and it shows you some of the key players and how they operate in this space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cait: What was the author’s, personal connection to this. Why were they so interested in this event in history and the lead up to it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dek: I actually don’t think there was anything specific. Apart from the fact this was obviously a major defining event for America and I believe Lawrence Wright was a journalist, possibly based in New York. I feel like they wanted to explore it and understand how this happened and convey that to a broader audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cait: Thank you for your time today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Al-Qaeda’s first documented terrorist strike bore the hallmark of its future actions. … If they succeeded, al-Qaeda would make an unrivaled claim on the world’s attention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews_books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1669"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1731,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669\/revisions\/1731"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}