Leaderless Jihad

Leaderless Jihad

Anyone feeling menaced by the long shadows cast by the White House these days should check out David Ignatius’s plug for former CIA officer Marc Sageman’s new book, Leaderless Jihad. Sageman has a clear prescription for the U.S. handling of terrorism: drop the act. Quit ratcheting up talk about Muslim extremists–today’s ‘third wave’ of jihadists are less extremists, more chatroom-based ‘terrorist wannabes,’ and glamorizing the ‘global war on terror’ just incites them further.

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Anyone feeling menaced by the long shadows cast by the White House these days should check out David Ignatius’s plug for former CIA officer Marc Sageman’s new book, Leaderless Jihad. Sageman has a clear prescription for the U.S. handling of terrorism: drop the act. Quit ratcheting up talk about Muslim extremists–today’s ‘third wave’ of jihadists are less extremists, more chatroom-based ‘terrorist wannabes,’ and glamorizing the ‘global war on terror’ just incites them further.

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Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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