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Osama Bin Laden |
To no one's
surprise, Secretary of State Colin Powell today named Osama
Bin Laden as a prime suspect in Tuesday's attacks. Bin
Laden's brutal record is well known. The United States
indicted him for masterminding the 1998 bombings of U.S.
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The Saudi fugitive was also
reportedly connected to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing,
the 1993 killing of American soldiers in Somalia, mid-'90s
bombings of U.S. facilities in Saudi Arabia, and the 2000
attack on the USS Cole. Authorities have prevented
Bin Laden associates from launching attacks during the
millennium celebrations, bombing a dozen trans-Pacific
flights in 1995, and assassinating the pope and President
Clinton in the Philippines.
This is what Bin
Laden does. But why does he do it? What does he want?
Bin Laden is the
most notorious advocate of a potent strain of militant Islam
that has been gaining popularity in the Muslim world for 30
years. It is simultaneously theological and cultural. Its
fundamental tenet is that the Muslim world is being poisoned
and desecrated by infidels. These infidels include both
outsiders such as the United States and Israel, and
governments of Muslim states—such as Egypt and Jordan—that
have committed apostasy. The infidels must be driven out of
the Muslim world by a jihad, and strict Islamic rule must be
established everywhere that Muslims live. These extreme
"Islamists," as Bin Laden biographer Yossef Bodansky dubs
them, hope to re-establish the Caliphate, the golden age of
Muslim domination that followed the death of Muhammad. They
regard the Taliban's Afghanistan as a model for such Islamic
rule.
This Islamist
militancy has ancient roots—Saladin's expulsion of the
crusaders in the 12th century is one starting
point—but it was galvanized in the 1970s by several events.
The growing influence of secular Western capitalism in the
Muslim world, the military triumphs of Israel, and the
Russian invasion of Afghanistan horrified Islamic
traditionalists. The Afghanistan invasion was the
culminating moment: It persuaded Bin Laden and thousands of
others of the need for Islamic holy war. Their fervor has
only increased since, fueled by the Palestinian intifada,
the Gulf War, the American operation in Somalia, and other
conflicts of Islam with the West.
(The Islamists
are not merely Pan-Arab but Pan-Islamic. Bin Laden is
exceptional in his ability to recruit from all over the
Muslim world. The Sunni Muslim world, that is. Bin Laden and
his allies follow a very strict Sunni Islam.)
That is Bin
Laden's general philosophy. What is his particular grievance
against the United States? According to CNN's Peter Bergen,
author of a forthcoming book on Bin Laden, Holy War,
Inc., Bin Laden is most enraged by the American
military presence in Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden was incensed
when the Saudis invited U.S. troops to their defense after
the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Bin Laden—like many
Muslims—considers the continued presence of these armed
infidels in Saudi Arabia the greatest possible desecration
of the holy land. That is why he sponsored bombings of the
American military facilities in Saudi Arabia, why he has
tried to destabilize the Saudi government, and why the
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed on Aug. 7,
1998—eight years to the day after the first American troops
were dispatched to Saudi Arabia.
Bin Laden is also
furious about American support for Israel. He detests Jews
and views the United States as the Jewish lackey. ("[Jews]
believe that all humans are created for their use, and they
found that the Americans are the best-created beings for
that use," Bin Laden has said.) His supporters seem
particularly exercised by Israel's reaction to the current
intifada, Bergen says. Bin Laden also can't tolerate
American alliances with moderate Arab governments in Egypt,
Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait.
Mainstream
Muslims denounce Bin Laden's bloody-mindedness—in 1998 he
issued a fatwa calling for attacks on all Americans—but he
has found plenty of firebrand clerics to offer Quranic
backing for his belief that terrorism is glorious. According
to Bodansky, these mullahs insist that all methods of war,
including terrorism, are justified in the battle against the
infidels. (Bin Laden, holding up a Quran, puts it this way:
"You cannot defeat the heretic with this book alone. You
have to show them the fist.")
Bin Laden has
strategic reasons to believe in terrorism, too. The Muslim
victory over the Soviet Union in Afghanistan showed him that
superpowers are not so superpowerful. And the ignominious
American withdrawal from Somalia—following a Bin Laden
connected attack—convinced him that the United States is
morally weak. The U.S. soldier is "a paper tiger" who
crumples after "a few blows."
It is a mistake
to assume that killing Bin Laden means killing his movement.
It's true that Bin Laden is an iconic leader who inspires
his followers and millions of sympathizers in the Muslim
world. But eliminating Bin Laden would do nothing to
decrease the intensity of the other militant Islamists. The
Afghan war created a cadre of warriors and belligerent
clerics who are constantly recruiting. Bin Laden has a core
of highly trained aides ready to continue his work. His
trainees are scattered in two dozen countries. It is hard to
imagine how the United States could neutralize all of them.
And attacks on Bin Laden have only increased his popularity:
Killing him would likely rally many more Muslims to his
cause.
(Some pundits
have suggested that killing Bin Laden would be effective
because it would stanch the flow of cash to terrorists. This
may not be so. Bin Laden's groups do get funds from his
personal fortune, but they also finance operations by
dunning wealthy Gulf Arabs and by siphoning off donations to
Muslim charities. And the terror organization is cheap. They
don't use heavy weapons, and it costs almost nothing to
house and train hundreds of men in Afghanistan.)
Is there anything
we can do to persuade Bin Laden to stop? The terror groups
Americans are familiar with—Palestinian bombers and
hijackers, IRA hard men—have desires we understand. They
perform acts of terror in order to gain sympathy or sow
fear. That sympathy or fear is a means to their end:
political recognition, a state, compensation. They seek to
participate in our world.
But Bin Laden and
his followers are alarming because they don't want anything
from us. They don't want our sympathy. They want no material
thing we can offer them. They don't want to participate in
the community of nations. (They don't really believe in the
nation-state.) They are motivated by religion, not politics.
They answer to no one but their god, so they certainly won't
answer to us.
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