Find, Fix, Finish

Book excerpt: On 9/11 the U.S. had effectively no counterterrorism doctrine. Fast forward ten years: Osama bin Laden is dead; al Qaeda is organizationally ruined and pinned in the tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan; there has been no major attack on American soil; and while there has been at least one instance of a massive planned attack, it was crushed by the greatest international collaboration of intelligence services seen since the end of the Cold War. It's been a remarkable transformation. Aki Peritz and Eric Rosenbach have experienced first-hand the monumental strategy changes in our country's counterterrorism strategy within the intelligence, defense, and political communities. In this book, they show how America learned to be very good at taking on the terrorists, often one at a time, in ever more lethally incisive operations. They offer new details behind some headlines from the last decade. They are frank about the mistakes that have been made. And they explain how a concept coined by General Grant during the Civil War has been reinvented in the age of satellite technology to manage a globally distributed foe, allowing the U.S. to find, fix, and finish its enemies.