I just found out that Osama Bin Laden’s “Letter to America” has been doing its rounds on TikTok but I haven’t seen anything about it been posted here on Lemmy about it. Perhaps people already know about it, I’m not sure. This is a link to the wayback machine. The original in the guardian has just been deleted after being online for 20 years.
I was in downtown NYC when 9/11 happened, and I saw the second plane hit. I then went and did some military and intelligence stuff for about a decade and a half. All of that is to say I’ve been involved with 9/11 and what happened after since Day 1.
My question is this - we all knew this was OBL’s point of view. I mean, after the towers fell I was standing in a crowd outside of Penn Station on 9/11 waiting for it to reopen, and everyone was talking about how it was probably OBL. He has been on that narrative for a decade or more, had executed other attacks, and was a known major actor.
It was very widely known that what had really set him off was the alliance between the Saudi government and the US, and in particular the US military presence in SA, which he saw as a holy land now occupied by infidels.
Everyone involved in “terrorist” operations always gives lip service to the Palestinians. I’m using scare quotes there because I think we throw around the word too much and it has lost all meaning except “people fighting using unconventional means.”
All of that aside, I’m honestly curious if this is the first time what I’m assuming are younger people are finding out that people like OBL and Arafat had a point of view and were not cardboard cutout bad guys. Nobody really believed they hate us for our freedom. I mean, there is a conflict in worldviews between conservative Islam and liberal western culture, but there’s also a conflict between conservative Islam and everything that isn’t conservative Islam, and there’s a conflict between conservative Christianity and liberal western culture that also results in acts of terrorism.
There are multiple geopolitical and moral dimensions to US involvement in regions around the world including the Middle East. They’re all worthy of debate and discussion.
I just am confused that a) this is new material for anyone and b) that people are treating it like they discovered Mein Kampf or the Protocols for the first time and are taking them at face value.
Nobody really believed they hate us for our freedom.
In your circles perhaps but it was pretty widespread rhetoric at the time.
This was an era where idiots were trying to rename French fries "Freedom fries" and burning Dixie Chick albums because they had criticized Bush. As a non-American it was eye-opening seeing many my formerly moderate US friends become thirsty for war and hysterically denounce anyone who disagreed.
I grew up in a red state. I recall that attempting to understand why the enemy attacked us was seen as being sympathetic to the enemy which was a traitorous position to take. Trying to explain the context of why we were attacked even in a conversation about how to most effectively defend ourselves was typically met with indignant anger. The only acceptable response to the attack was total annihilation of the enemy. I heard “glass them over” more times than I can count. The actual military response was seen as a merciful compromise where I’m from.
It’s my first time reading it. In those early days and years after the attacks, as a kid, I found it difficult to find exactly this though I was looking for it. Probably, it wouldn’t have been hard to find if I’d tried a little harder, given how old this major newspaper article is, but certainly nothing like this ever graced the airwaves or was circulated in print via Australian media in my home country. When I asked people what exactly this guy really wanted the answers were split between the ridiculously obviously bullshit line about terrorists hating freedom (which somehow also encapsulated Australian freedom but resulted in America getting attacked); and the more sympathetic view about American and western hypocrisy and bombing people. The latter might have seemed like the answer was there but it was vague, probably because people were unlikely to have read this and there were so many similar acts of violence and hypocrisy it’d be hard to say which ones specifically. That never quite explained it to me either because while less self serving and favourable, I found it unlikely that our hypocrisy in the west would annoy someone half a world away enough to carry out violence any more than our “freedom” would unless more specific “damages” had been inflicted because of that hypocrisy. The letter is enlightening because even though it’s mostly the same answer, because it’s more concrete in its specific grievances. At least at first blush.
That said, it does read, as you say as kind of lip service to each and every cause celebre listed as part of a general anger and to an extent it also kind of showed me that at least to a degree “democracy” and “freedom” sort of were mentioned in there as part of the rationale for jihad. This was curious because there seems to be a contempt in there for democracy as a system and its values combined with decrying how it has been undermined and corrupted by America and Americans and phrased in a way which seems unaware that the implication is that if America and the west were more true to their professed values there wouldn’t be a problem, even though he seems to an extent to actually have a problem with those values themselves.
I think people are duly interested and surprised to read this and to discover that it’s actually reasonably easy to understand and contains at times points that are understand-able in the sense that one could sympathise because while it probably was easy enough to find if really looking, this hasn’t in my experience been given much daylight. People have always spoken for Osama Bin Laden and his ilk and the vagueness has always given his motives an air of mysteriousness because they morphed in to the views of whatever puppeteer was speaking for him at any time. It made him inscrutable and for me made his actual reasons something I could assume were very complex. This sets it out mostly pretty clearly with the occasional steering in to rantings of an old angry religious guy. Our media, whilst presumably never banning or censoring this, (this is the guardian after all, it’s pretty major) tended to keep it pretty quiet despite exhaustive coverage of experts saying what they thought it was all about. It makes the popularisation of this much later feel a bit like discovering a hidden text, even if hidden in plain sight.
It’s interesting what you said about Saudi Arabia, but then if that was what really set him off enough to escalate things to this new level, why didn’t he mention it? It seems given everything else that warranted a mention this could have been framed as he saw it and continue to support his point.
Thank you for this - this was a fantastic explanation.
OBL had written and communicated frequently his opposition to what he saw as the US occupation of what he considers holy land, and it was very much a known driving factor in his actions. We knew about it since the Clinton administration.
I think it’s good and necessary to get rid of “they hate us for our freedom” as particularly stupid western propaganda. Of course they do. They see the West as a decadent cesspool that disobeys god. So does the Islamic Revolution government in Iran, so does North Korea, so does China, and so on. That’s not why you 9/11, any more than you invade Vietnam to end oppression and bring peace. And they’re definitely pissed about Israel too, but my point is that everyone up to and including (iirc) the Red Army Faction issued statements about Palestine. Palestine is a cause celebre. There’s a saying “When all was said and done, more was said than done.” That’s what we’ve been seeing since the Yom Kippur war. OBL could have gone after Israel. There could have been Al Qaeda fighters on their borders. Hell, they could have been funneling weapons in and training Palestinian fighters. It’s lip service and de rigueur.
The problem comes in when people view international relations like a Marvel movie with good guys and bad guys. Note that I am absolutely not saying everyone is the same. As a member of Team Rainbow, I’d rather live in the US than Saudi Arabia, and I’d rather live in California than Texas. The hero story - Reagan’s Shining City on a Hill - has deep roots in American exceptionalism and the beacon of democracy stuff. While not exactly false, it’s also not exactly true, and the idea was weaponized deliberately by people like Leo Strauss at Chicago to create a mythical America that people would think about using exactly the ideas you’re talking about. That’s where “they hate us for our freedoms” comes from. They don’t. They hate us because they’d rather be the ones in charge.
From a moral perspective, I consider something like 9/11 and the bombing of Hiroshima at the same level, just to be clear. That’s not a popular opinion with a lot of people.
But at the end of the day, you have to decide whether Hitler had a point, Pol Pot had a point, Idi Amin had a point, or whether, despite them having a point of view, we’d rather see an international order one way or the other.
I’ve stopped working on that kind of thing because I do believe it’s morally ambiguous at best. I do think people should be fully aware of the motivating factors of all of the actors involved - whether AQ, PLO, IRA, UK, USA, and so on. Just don’t take any of it at face value and instead think about actual, not idealized, outcomes.
As usual, both, like most US Presidents are war criminals if we go by the International Definition. If you can see it objectively, which many Americans may have trouble doing so.
Bush’s actions ended up killing 4+ million in the Middle East, along with the creation of ISIS. Extra ironic points since the USA gave billions to the Mujahideen, back in the day, funding a young Osama Bin Ladden, so they could wage a civil war against the Afghanistani goverment during their civil war. Because the goverment was leaning communist at the time. Seen those photos where Afghanistani women wore western clothing in the late 70’s? The USA helped get rid of that by giving money to the religious zealots.
Obama murdered the most people via drone attacks in history. Mostly on Pakistan and Afghanistan at the time. Including whole families and children. Also, he pardon/freed Bushed from liability the moment he took office. If I recall.
As far as I’m concerned that letter should already be taught to students when they learn about 911, which didn’t happen due to some amorphous hatred of American ‘freedom,’ it happened due to Blow Back from decades of American intervention in the Middle East. The fact that they are worried about Gen Z reading it without context on tiktok is truly indicative of how wholy lacking American Education is in teaching history.
I mean, can we also teach how the religious references infer that any conflict leads to war as well or how opinion of what is owed them or what rights their religion “grants” them to punish non-believers results in war? Essentially creating a system of “what we say goes otherwise we will go to war with you.”
He just says “Also check out our final part of the Abrahamic trilogy it’s pretty rad, maybe it can help Americans to stop being evil”.
Not sure why people are interpreting this as if he wants to force all Americans to convert.
Bin Laden was a Saudi that went to Afghanistan because the Islamic community called for help to defend against the Russians. If not for his religion he’d just be chilling in Saudi with oil money instead of risking his life defending oppressed minorities against genocide.
He kinda keeps bringing up Islam and how the Americans and Jews are against them. So yea kinda think Islam played a big part in his thought process. Or at least his version of Islam.
Him saying the Americans and Jews are against them might be related to, you know, the fact that the Americans and the Zionists were (and are) actively stealing their land and resources.
The only thing that is incorrect is him using Jews instead of Zionists, however since Zionists actively refer to themselves as Jews this is an understandable mistake (but not one we should continue to make) .
Ok I think you may be thinking that I’m blaming Islam on this. I’m not. I’m an ex-muslim myself, so I know the religion and nothing in the Quran tells Muslims to hate Jews or whatever, the opposite actually. He’s using religion as an excuse despite it saying otherwise, which makes others who don’t know about religion blame the religion or culture for his actions.
Also I know the issue is Zionists and Zionists have done a great job conflating Zionism and Judaism. But the letter says both Jews and Zionists in different places, because bin laden was conflating them himself. Not right, but still that does show some antisemitism there that he continuously conflates the two, leading him to blame Jews sometimes rather than clearly being against Zionism.
The Fox News boomers have likely never even seen this letter. Gen Z is far more politically educated than any generation of Americans before them. They’re wiser than the avarage boomer already.
Did you not read the entire second half of the letter?
The thing briefly mentions US foreign policy in the opening, but then goes on to be all about how Islam is the only way and everyone needs to convert to it or the bombings and terror will continue.
And in that section, as examples of the US’s moral failings in the eyes of Islam he cites things like homosexuality as what needs to stop.
So yes, he did hate the US for its freedoms, and at the core of the issue was not simply blowback but religious zealotry.
The US has meddled worldwide. You don’t see South Americans whose democratic governments were overthrown by tyrants who tortured their family members with US support suddenly bombing civilians in the US.
The key difference between the many places the US has pulled some major BS and Al Queda is that only the latter was fueled by religious orthodoxy committed to worldwide forced conversion which then used US foreign policy as rationalization for killing civilians to demand that conversion.
As terrible as terrorist organizations are to the West, they perform exponentially more terror in their own regions in the service of religious conservatism at the end of a sword (literally).
9/11 was connected to blow back for US policy, but it happened because of people who think a religion by a 54 year old who married a six year old should be followed by the entire world and anyone who refuses must die terribly as a caution to the next person given a choice between conversion or terror.
In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
Anyone that does crazy stuff to appease their magical man in the sky isn’t someone I’m ever going to agree with.
That aside, thank you for sharing this. Books and texts aren’t things to be afraid of, or things we should censor and keep from the public. Even if we don’t agree with a point of view, it’s important we understand it, and learn from it however we can.
It says more about the people that are trying to stop you from reading something, in fact. Those people I would never trust.
Rightly so. Although his reasoning wrt Israel can be discussed, let’s not forget that bottom line he and his club believe they’ll earn their place in heaven by killing people who don’t follow their religion. These people want to make the world worse
Literally the whole second point he wrote was how the only way to make things right is to completely and unquestionably follow the Quran until the day of judgement. I was kinda with him in the first half, and then he just jumped off a cliff
The main point he makes about Israel is that they are the wrong religion. Had it been sunnis cleansing Palestine from shiites he’d been all peachy bless their holy merciful balls with it
Yeah I can see why they removed it, they made it clear in no uncertain terms that the only reason they attacked America was out of self defence, which isn’t exactly a good look for the west when they’re actively funding an outright genocide against Muslim-majority civilians. Makes it really hard to manufacture consent for war against a people who openly state they’re willing to turn the same kind of war crimes back on them.
It’s pretty bad that newspapers can alter or delete articles from 2 decades ago, without any laws or regulations around revision history etc, though. Altering history because it becomes unappealing to the present is extremely dangerous. That opens the historic record up to complete revision and why internet archives should be viewed and funded like libraries and other historic archives. No present or future entity (public or private) should be able to change history as they see fit.
Without knowing anything of whatever is going viral, I have definitely seen some pretty shallow takes on how dumb Gen-Z must be to start reading bin Laden.
Of course such takes completely fail to address at all the content of the letter and why in the world it would have some resonance right now.
Which, for anyone remotely familiar with the letter, paints them as pretty uninformed and probably “old and backwards” in the eyes of younger people looking back on the 9/11 era with the current Gaza situation and the US’s super-boomer president’s position in mind. And, moreover, finding volumes of relevance in just how old the letter is (relative to them) and how apparently “dangerous” it is to read, to the point of censorship, for something that can read as surprisingly cogent and applicable right now.
If it is actually going viral amongst Gen-z, this could be millennials’ “ok boomer” moment, where the 9/11 experience has passed into history and our forever enemy bin Laden, who millennials can’t fathom as anything other than a monster, might make more sense for some on current politics than some of us do.
Such a weird justification for taking it down, saying it was being shared without context when you can just edit your own article and add whatever context you think is necessary
There are more than a billion Muslims in the world. Obviously, Bin Laden is an idiot. But within those billion Muslims there are enough other idiots that share his way of thinking. Enough that things like Hamas and ISIS are real threats to our societies.
I, for one, do not wish to engage in a holy war against these idiots on behalf of an Apartheid regime.
Neutrality in holy wars is a perfectly reasonable position to take.
If Netanyahu wants to desecrate their mosque, steal their land and kill their children, then we should condemn that. Not support it.
Our governments are painting a red flag on our backs and inflaming the stupid bull.
Yeah I was surprised they took it down. I think it's a foolish knee jerk reaction and is patronising towards readers.
Ironically there is know nothing to put the current spike of interest in context as you can't read the letter on the guardian website.
I'm actually really unimpressed with the guardians action - they don't respect their readers and clearly no longer believe in freedom of speech. They could have modified the article to put the letter in context themselves rather than link to a 20 year old article criticising it. It also makes it hard for those who want to push back against the letter and answer those who are pushing it.
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