OSAMA BIN LADEN'S GAME PLAN
(take notes, Kiddies)
Osama looks out over the Muslim world and he finds it offensive. He remembers a glorious history where the faithful went out and literally conquered half the world overnight, fighting their way through Asia, Africa and even Europe. Creating the Caliphate, the Mogul Empire in India, even the Ottoman Turks. Great works were built everywhere. He remembers these as a golden era of faith, when Muslims were truly Muslims, Allah loved them, and rewarded them. Keep this in mind. History for Osama is not just a bunch of old farts who don't matter any more, and its not what Britney did with Lynsey Lohan's lipstick last week. History, a version of history, is a crucial part of both Osama's world view and his motivations.
Then Osama looks out over the current Arab world. What does he see? Poverty, misery, failure everywhere. They spend all their money on weapons, but they can't win a war. They can't build roads. They can't do anything. Arab rulers like the Saudi and Kuwaiti royal families are corrupt, using their wealth to pamper themselves and buy off their people. Other Arabs have tried to overcome corruption, but at the cost of selling their souls - Saddam, Sadat, Mubarak, Quaddafi, the Assads. None of these are good Muslims, rather, they're trying to be westerners, dressing up in suits and ties or army fatigues, renouncing their culture and the sources of their actual strength. The Arab world is Earth's scrotum, it's smelly, hairy, wrinkled, dangling and oversensitive. Once the Arabs were the center of the world, now they're its hind quarters. This is also an important part of Bin Laden's world view.
Okay, so what's wrong? There are two problems. The big problem as Bin Laden and the Taliban saw it is that Allah had withheld his favour (these guys have a lot in common with Jerry Falwell). Muslims have become lazy, weak, corrupt, they've lost their faith. So Allah turns his face away, and misfortune plagues them.
So the key is to get Muslims to be good Muslims again. Believe it or not, this was the entirety of the Taliban's approach to government. They thought that as long as God was displeased, nothing else was going to work. And if you made God happy, the rest of the stuff... the actual nuts and bolts of government, would just naturally take care of itself. So they were out there trying to force people to be Good muslims.
This is also the song that most of the fundamentalist muslims (and christians) sing. The world sucks and your misfortunes are a result of your not being sufficiently faithful. If you only got back to God, it would work out.
In this sense, Osama sees Israel and America as Gods wake up call to the people of Islam. Sort of a slap upside the head as you were.
But here's where it gets interesting. He also sees America and Israel as meddling in Arab society and government. He sees these powers as agents of corruption, propping up corrupt despots like the Saudi royals, impoverishing people with sanctions, making occasional wars upon them, using economic tools to prey upon them, and using cultural warfare like pornography, clothes, fashion, drugs, television, etc. The Far enemy uses its distance to put Muslims at their ease and uses lies and seduction.
Islam must be restored, but Bin Laden and most fundamentalists sees two enemies: The 'Near Enemy' - Saddam, Mubarak, Shiites, the House of Saud. The 'Far Enemy' Israel and America.
Now, among radicals like Bin Laden, the big argument has always been strategy. Who do you attack first? The Near Enemy or the Far Enemy. If you can defeat the Near Enemy, then the Far Enemy will become irrelevant, or at least easier to challenge. The real goal is always to restore Islamic society.
The big victory and the big failure of the 'Near' approach was the Taliban. Sure, they took over an entire country and began to enact their Islamic paradise. On the other hand, they proved to be total screwups, petty and inept boobs. The Islamic world got a good look at the kind of society the fundamentalists wanted to build.... and they didn't like it at all.
The big victory of the far approach was the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was the biggest most aggressive empire ever, its military forces were unstoppable. And yet, a handful of ragged Mujahedeen with nothing but their faiths, their flip flops and their AK's stopped them cold and eventually destroyed the evil Empire.
(Okay, the US may have had something to do with it, but Bin Laden finds it easy to overlook that)
Local corruption is too entrenched, the Muslims have become too lazy, too divided. They need an outside force to unite them. They need to be shown.
So here's Bin Laden's great idea: Let's do Afganistan/USSR all over again. Let's force the FAR ENEMY to come here among us Muslims, so we can unite to fight the infidel, and in doing so, rediscover our true nature. And this time, we'll keep it.
So, here was his Master Plan. Strike a brutal blow against the FAR ENEMY. Force it to show its true nature by coming and invading an Islamic country like Afghanistan. And then bleed it to death, while rallying the faithful. Without the far enemy to prop them up, the corrupt regimes will fail, and the faithful will sweep all before them.
Thus, 9/11.
Bin Laden wanted the US in Afghanistan, it was precisely part of his plans. It was to create a battlefield to kill another superpower, and spread the seed of Islamic revolution. He didn't quite get what he wanted. The US went light, minimal presence, and worked heavily through the northern Alliance.
In Iraqi he got a twofer. Not only one of his most hated Near Enemies destroyed, but the Far Enemy in the heart of the Muslim world, rather than a remote provincial backwater. As far as Bin Laden was concerned, Iraq was perfect. Afghanistan, Saddam and Iraq was Bin Laden's trifecta.
America's threats against Iran and Syria are another bit twofer. He hates both of these regimes as apostate. It's all part of purifying the Islamic world and uniting it against the common enemy.
Right now, he thinks its working out swimmingly. Terrific. Great. He thinks he's winning.
He's playing a long game. He doesn't expect to live to see the end of it. It might be the next generation, or the one after that.
But he believes in the end, America will fall, Israel will vanish, the corrupt petty governments imposed upon the Muslim people will be swept away, and Allah shall smile upon his people.
