Al Qaeda's Great Escape: The Military and the Media on Terror's Trail - Hardcover

Smucker, Philip

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1574886282 ISBN 13: 9781574886283

Publisher: Potomac Books Inc, 2004

Synopsis

The author describes American military operations in Afghanistan, press coverage of the war, and how Osama bin Laden and many of his followers escaped from Afghanistan.

About this title

About the Author

PHILIP SMUCKER has spent the last sixteen years as an overseas reporter, covering conflicts in Burma, Cambodia, Haiti, Bosnia, Serbia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He currently writes for U.S. News and World Report and the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph. Smucker broke the story of bin Laden’s escape from Afghanistan in the Christian Science Monitor in December 2001. In connection with his reporting in Afghanistan, Smucker appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, Chris Matthews’s Hardball, ABC’s Nightline, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Reports, and other television programs. Smucker resides in Cairo, Egypt.

From Publishers Weekly

Christian Science Monitor foreign correspondent Smucker offers an excellent, compact study of the campaign in Afghanistan and expounds a familiar thesis clearly and convincingly: the U.S. military, under not only executive but public pressure for a quick victory in revenge for September 11, adopted a strategy that achieved that victory, but only over the Taliban. Resources were not allocated to the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his cohorts, many of whom either fled or went underground, to continue to cause trouble in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The bulk of the book details how that was allowed to happen. Smucker is much harsher on U.S. strategists and his fellow journalists than he is on the American fighting men and women in the field, who include not only the glamorous covert operations troops but the humble logisticians "in the air, on land, and sea." Stronger on the military than on the civilian side, Smucker does not adequately deal with the question of whether the pursuit of the Taliban received its priority because of the need for Northern Alliance support, and the Washington-based coverage could have been usefully expanded. Much more literate than most journalistic accounts, this book is not for ideologues at either end of the spectrum, as the struggle for balance and perspective is visible on every page. By the end, the wealth of operational detail will leave readers with a palpable sense of missed opportunity.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Potomac Books Inc
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1574886282
• ISBN 13: 9781574886283
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256