Bin Laden's Head

Now that Osama may [or may not] be in Iran, but apparently is alive and not in Afghanistan, the AntiCentenarian would like to re-examine some of the reasons that we're dealing with him in the first place. Actually, rather, we stumbled across this well-written [sarcasm] piece by Andrew Walden over at MOONBAT CENTRAL who has magnificantly pieced together the full puzzle of Osama Bin Laden's brain, [Full Disclosure: An alternative purpose to this posting is that the AntiCentenarian is just gunning for an unearned guest spot on discoverthenetwork.com's exposure of the network of liberal conspirators] using only the final interview bin Laden gave to a westerner, John Miller, for a Frontline profile piece of the terror mastermind.

[Walden links to the interview here, in the Free Republic databases, the primordial ooze from which much digital conservative thought and discussion evolves. For more of Walden's work, check out his eye-splitting font-usage here. ]

Walden's method of psychological analysis of Bin Laden is to take quotes from the interview as a method of shedding light on bin Laden's intentions as they relate to American interests and freedoms. His conclusion is that bin Laden simply hates America and feeds on the apparent weakness of the superpower.

From Waldon on Moonbat:

Terrorists are not provoked by American actions or policies as the so-caled [sic] 'liberals' would like us to believe--they are inspired by what they see as American weakness. Here’s what Osama bin-Laden has to say on the subject in his last (1998) interview with an American journalist. (Thanks to Free Republic for keeping this available even as ABC News no longer posts it. ...

[list of bin Laden quotes...]

Al-Qaeda is not a political movement of any type. It is a means of grabbing power and wealth for its leaders.

While al Qaeda chops heads and kills Iraqi babies, bin Laden revels in watching American liberals blame Bush for scuffing up a few Korans and "torturing" Gitmo al-Qaeda detainees by forcing them to eat MREs in air conditioned rooms with bright lights and rock and roll music. It proves to him that we are weak and decadent and can be destroyed, just as he believes he destroyed the other superpower. Bin-Laden actually believes he can rule the world.

Walden's first comment, refuting how "so-caled liberals" would have us believe that bin Laden hates American policy a strange position to take while using the text of this document to underpin it:

After World War II, the Americans grew more unfair and more oppressive towards people in general and Muslims in particular. ... The Americans started it and retaliation and punishment should be carried out following the principle of reciprocity, especially when women and children are involved. Through history, American has not been known to differentiate between the military and the civilians or between men and women or adults and children. Those who threw atomic bombs and used the weapons of mass destruction against Nagasaki and Hiroshima were the Americans. Can the bombs differentiate between military and women and infants and children? America has no religion that can deter her from exterminating whole peoples. Your position against Muslims in Palestine is despicable and disgraceful. America has no shame. ... We believe that the worst thieves in the world today and the worst terrorists are the Americans. Nothing could stop you except perhaps retaliation in kind. We do not have to differentiate between military or civilian. As far as we are concerned, they are all targets, and this is what the fatwah says ... . The fatwah is general (comprehensive) and it includes all those who participate in, or help the Jewish occupiers in killing Muslims.

...
We are all together in this; we all work for Allah and our reward comes from him. As to what you said about the attempt to assassinate President Clinton, it is not surprising. What do you expect from people attacked by Clinton, whose sons and mothers have been killed by Clinton? Do you expect anything but treatment by reciprocity?
...
I say to them that they have put themselves at the mercy of a disloyal government, and this is most evident in Clinton's administration ... . We believe that this administration represents Israel inside America. Take the sensitive ministries such as the Ministry of Exterior and the Ministry of Defense and the CIA, you will find that the Jews have the upper hand in them. They make use of America to further their plans for the world, especially the Islamic world. American presence in the Gulf provides support to the Jews and protects their rear. And while millions of Americans are homeless and destitute and live in abject poverty, their government is busy occupying our land and building new settlements and helping Israel build new settlements in the point of departure for our Prophet's midnight journey to the seven heavens. America throws her own sons in the land of the two Holy Mosques for the sake of protecting Jewish interests. ...

Clearly, bin Laden suffers from misinformation of his own, but he's clearly griping about, yes, American policy in the Middle East. He lays out two of the stated purposes of al Qaeda in the mid east: to rid Isreali influence over what he sees as the oppression of Palestinians [and, it should be noted, a perspective that is widely shared globally, and not just by fundamentalist islamofascists]; and the purging of non-Moslem forces from the Holy Land of Islam, Mecca and Medina, the land of Saudi Arabia. A) American forces overwhelmingly have supported the Israeli effort; B) Saudi Arabia allowed America into the penninsula in the first Gulf War. These are the clear infringements as bin Laden sees them of American policy.

Walden, however, is clearly correct to say that bin Laden saw opportunity in American weakness. This much is very clear from the bin Laden passages, and it is used as an al Qaeda rallycry.

So what does bin Laden want now, at this point in time? Are there more spectacular and horrifying attacks on the way to the western powers, such as 9/11 and Spain's 3/11 attacks?

The purpose of al Qaeda, by virtue of a combination of action and stated goals clearly states that they're after fundamentalist Islamic control of the region and of the globe, perhaps. Walden is right to say that bin Laden thinks he can gain control of the globe. But what of the underlying assumption that American policy has nothing to do with this? Is it not, to some degree, America's responsiblity to maintain the knowledge of what they do and who they support, and how those actions reflect upon the world? While bin Laden seems to be able to recruit followers by the truckload, would it not be in America's best interest to work to remove the incentives for those recruited? Are the conditions not in place for them; and does America provide a better alternative? The problem is not simply America's policy; the problem is the manipulable aspect of these tenuous, dangerous policies into extremely dangerous perceptions in parts of the world.

Not really.

In many ways, we've fed right into the hands of a very influential madman... and we haven't been able to find him or bring him to justice...

From Imperial Hubris, the book written by CIA member Michael Sheuer, but published initially anonymously, about the failing War on Terror:

My thesis is like the one that shaped Through Our Enemies' Eyes, namely, that ideas are the main drivers of human history and, in the words of Perry Miller, the American historian of Puritanism, are "coherent and powerful imperatives to human behavior." In short, my thesis is that the threat Osama bin Laden poses lies in the coherence and consistency of his ideas, their precise articulation, and the acts of war he takes to implement them. That threat is sharpened by the fact that bin Laden's ideas are grounded in and powered by the tenets of Islam, divine guidelines that are completely familiar to most of the world's billion-plus Muslims and lived by them on a daily basis. The commonality of religious ideas and the lifestyle they shape, I would argue, equip bin Laden and his coreligionists with a shared mechanism for perceiving and reacting to world events. "Islam is not only a matter of faith and practice," Professor Bernard Lewis has explained, "it is also an identity and a loyalty -- for many an identity and loyalty that transcends all others." Most important, for this book, the way in which bin Laden perceives the intent of U.S. policies and actions appears to be shared by much of the Islamic world, whether or not the same percentage of Muslims support bin Laden's martial response to those perceived U.S. intentions. "Arabs may deplore this [bin Laden's] violence, but few will not feel some pull of emotions," British journalist Robert Fisk noted in late 2002. "Amid Israel's brutality toward Palestinians and America's threats toward Iraq, at least one Arab is prepared to hit back."

Bin Laden is not necessarily a genius or a lunatic. But he has mastered the art of religious and political manipulation.

Sounds familiar.