It cost America its best - perhaps only - chance to deliver what is called a 'decapitation' operation, one with a chance to kill at a stroke many al-Qaeda and Taleban leaders" (24). Even if the leaders had survived, immediate American military strikes could have destroyed thousands of enemy soldiers. .

             Throughout his book, Scheurer makes the U.S.'s biggest mistake: It does not understand the mind of the enemy-a number-one priority in any war. This, if nothing else, will spell failure for America. In fact, the U.S. played right into the "bad guy's" hand. All along, the administration described Osama bin Laden as an anomaly, whose beliefs and tactics were supported by a minority of the Arab population. However, argues Scheurer, he is anything but an abnormality with farfetched ideals, bin Laden is the protector of the jihad or holy war against a country that helped him "wage a holy war against the Soviet Army in Afghanistan." It is like the pot calling the kettle black. .

             How credible can the United States look with its track record of militarism and might in the recent past and present, including U.S. backing of Russia, India and China against the Muslim militants, continued support for Israel that is playing hard to get with the Palestinians; occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and troops on the Arabian peninsula; U.S. control over Iraq and Afghanistan; and support of too-numerous to name right-wing military political powers for all the wrong reasons?.

             Scheurer concludes that there is no way the U.S. is going to win a war against so-called terrorists or anyone else until it clearly recognizes and admits who bin Laden and his followers are, their real fears and determined goals.

             Similarly in his book, New Crusade: The U.S. War on Terrorism (2002), Rahul Mahajan, a physics graduate student at the University of Texas who serves on the national boards of Peace Action and the Education for Peace in Iraq Center and writes on foreign policy and globalization in national publications, noted that it is not enough to admit that the attacks were crimes against humanity and that terrorism like this must be stopped: those are givens.