Event

AFA Literary Cafe (MARCH)

Analyst and pundit Rachel Ehrenfeld contends that our image of terrorism is all wrong. Rather than shadowy cells of young, religious martyrs, the true face of terror, she says, is an international network of corrupt state leaders, super wealthy contributors, and drug and crime kingpins. Without money, especially laundered U.S. dollars, there would be no terror, and this lively, well-documented primer reveals the sources, the amounts and the armed terror organizations they support. The author is at her best on the ironies of the West's appetite for drugs, which terror groups exploit for funding, arms and recruiting those who would undermine a degenerate Western society. Reigniting the drug war and supporting Israel are Ehrenfeld's clear national security priorities, as are other policy initiatives like regime removal and economic sanctions for states sponsoring terrorism. But the Bush and Obama administrations - and a succession of U.S. and Western leaders - are taken to task for "a willful blindness" to the role of the international oil and drug trades in funding terror and for "lacking the political will" to confront Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and other states for their "anti-Western agenda."