Osama bin Laden is evil. I'd imagine that the majority of Americans would agree with this statement. However there is something empty in it, something too simplistic in its reasoning that leaves us scratching our heads and wondering what to do. If Osama bin Laden and his cohorts are simply evil, what recourse do we have but to engage in a massive campaign of genocide to wipe them from the planet?
In my last post a commenter made it clear to me that many Americans do not understand the stated goals of Osama bin Laden and his followers. We have been told time and time again that they hate us because of our freedoms. They are envious of us. They want to prevent democracy from coming to the Middle East. You've heard it all before. And no matter how little you know about the issue, something in the back of your mind nags at you that there must be something more to it than that: there is.
The major problem is that we tend to be ahistorical. We go into this with little or no understanding of our dealings with these nations over the past fifty years. Couple that with the fact that we all carry this notion that the United States is that shining knight in armor ready to do good at any and all cost and you can understand why it's so hard for us to understand what's going on here. Our representatives in government--both Democrat and Republican--along with an obedient press corp have not helped the situation in the slightest.
Thus I thought it would be a good time to take a look at the words of Osama bin Laden. Maybe he's an evil liar and looking at his words is pointless. But what if they seem to match his actions? What if they turn out to be credible? If we're at all serious about this war on terror, it behooves us to better understand our enemy. The quotes I will be using come from the full transcript of Osama's last video, given to Al Jazeera last November. You can read the full transcript by clicking here, and I urge you to do so. I'm simply going to highlight some things he talks about.
Before I begin, I say to you that security is an indispensable pillar of human life and that free men do not forfeit their security, contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom.
If so, then let him explain to us why we don't strike for example - Sweden? And we know that freedom-haters don't possess defiant spirits like those of the 19 - may Allah have mercy on them.No, we fight because we are free men who don't sleep under oppression. We want to restore freedom to our nation, just as you lay waste to our nation. So shall we lay waste to yours.
One thing I will say for Osama bin Laden is that he's been consistant in his messages to us. Again and again he has spoken out against US oppression in the area. It is the United States, for instance, that props up the brutal and oppressive house of Saud in Saudia Arabia. It was the United States that overthrew the democratically Mosedeq in Iran in 1953 in order to install the Shah; and we have a long history of supressing popular movements in the area and around the world. We are also responsible for helping install the Baathist regime in Iraq back in the 1960s. We may not remember these events, but don't think for a second that our Arab friends have forgotten this.
Osama gives us a glimpse into what stirred him to action back in 1982:
The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and injured and others were terrorised and displaced.
Let's also be clear that when the Israelis brutalize someone they are doing it with weapons and funding provided by US taxpayers. They are, in a sense, a proxy army of the United States, heavily reliant upon us to prop them up. He goes on to say,
And that day, it was confirmed to me that oppression and the intentional killing of innocent women and children is a deliberate American policy. Destruction is freedom and democracy, while resistance is terrorism and intolerance.
Here he captures the Orwellian mood of our country where "Destruction is freedom and democracy, while resistance is terrorism and intolerance." If you pay attention to our foreign policy, it's not hard to see the truth in these statements. Our brutal sanction regime led to the death of over 500,000 Iraqi children; and over a million Iraqis in total died. Amy Goodman once pointed out that in the run up to war we often saw a picture of Saddam Hussein with a bulls eye on his head; but she said if we were to be accurate we should show a picture of a small Iraqi child because that is the real victim of war. Hussein and bin Laden are alive and well, but how many more children have we killed in Iraq and Afghanistan?
He goes on to speak of his experience in fighting a Super Power (the Soviets) and their plans:
This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat.All Praise is due to Allah.So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah.
How crazy is he? Isn't that exactly what he's doing now? How many billions have we shuffled off to the quagmire in Iraq? How many billions more will we send? All the while our infastructure here at home continues to deteriorate, nearly 50 million Americans do not have health care; millions more have such high deductables they cannot afford to use their health care; and the majority of bankruptcies in this country are due to medical bills, and yet we continue to squander our wealth in a place where we are not wanted. The dollar continues to slip.
He goes on to point out how poorly the Bush administration failed in defending us against the attacks on 9/11:
...we had agreed with the Commander-General Muhammad Ataa, Allah have mercy on him, that all the operations should be carried out within 20 minutes, before Bush and his administration notice. It never occurred to us that the commander-in-chief of the American armed forces would abandon 50,000 of his citizens in the twin towers to face those great horrors alone, the time when they most needed him.
They didn't even realize just how stupid our president was:
But because it seemed to him that occupying himself by talking to the little girl about the goat and its butting was more important than occupying himself with the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers, we were given three times the period required to execute the operations - all praise is due to Allah.
We all remember the wonderful footage of our righteous leader sitting there in that classroom looking lost and confused for what seemed like an eternity. There was no script. He didn't know what to do; and he did nothing, except hide: real tough guy.
Osam bin Laden ends with what I think are the most important words in his entire speech:
Your security is in your own hands. And every state that doesn't play with our security has automatically guaranteed its own security.
This is the truth. Our security is in our hands, but we must be willing to consider the causes of the terrorist attacks, and we must be willing to consider our role in causing those attacks. That doesn't mean that the attacks were justified at all. But unless we understand our role in these events, we'll never be able to bring them to an end. If "terrorism" is only something other people do, then we're not serious about fighting it.
Osam bin Laden may be the ultimate evil bad guy, but if we want to effectively prevent more attacks we would do well to understand him and his followers. Otherwise, we could very well be filing for bankruptcy at the UN sometime soon.
Osama bin Laden is evil. I'd imagine that the majority of Americans would agree with this statement. However there is something empty in it, something too simplistic in its reasoning that leaves us scratching our heads and wondering what to do. If Osama bin Laden and his cohorts are simply evil, what recourse do we have but to engage in a massive campaign of genocide to wipe them from the planet?
