One question is, is Osama bin Laden religious? Yes, he's a fundamentalist/radial, from what I've seen - not just 'using' religion (like some do in this country) for politics.
His branch of religion is very unpopular among Muslims, just as some radical branches of Christianity are very unpopular among most Christians.
For example, many racist groups consider themselves Christian, but most Christians disagree with them.
Now, another question is, were bin Laden's motives the ones he stated? Or were they something else?
We've reviewed his stated motives - from the US military bases in Saudi Arabia, to US callousness about civilian casualties from Iraq sanctions, to Palestinians and more.
These aren't unreasonable 'issues' - indeed, they are good 'PR' issues in the Muslim world, things Muslims (and some in the US who are concerned with moral issues) care about.
For example, imagine if Saudi Arabia not only had bases here, but kept a dictatorship in power over the US so they could get our resources cheaply. We wouldn't mind, right?
And that's just the secular issue, not even getting into the religious - maybe toss in Saudi Arabia doing the same thing in the 'holy land'.
But what exactly were his motives for the attack, with those concerns? Did he expect the US to fall and him to take over? No. Did he expect the US to change these policies because of the attacks? No, that makes no sense either. Was it just a desperate attack for the sake of striking out at his enemy? That's the most plausible, but first consider the other motive.
Al Queda saw themselves losing ground in the Muslim world. The Taliban was always under 10% approval from Afghans even when they ruled the country; most Muslims wanted nothing to do with the Al Queda faction, they were tiny and more and more at risk from other Muslims who opposed them. What would they like? To get huge numbers of Muslims on their side.
But how to do that? Well, making a common enemy is among the best ways. The offenses above had Muslim support, but had not made Muslims turn to Al Queda.
What would? The US attacking a Muslim nation would rip apart 'peace', good relations, and drive masses of Muslims to turn against the US with a passion.
Ironically, this is pretty much the same thing that happened for Bush - a country that had a pretty poor opinion of him, when there was an enemy who attacked us, had much of the country including his opponents unite and his approval rating shot from low (relative to the norm for a President) and declining, to 90%.
But bin Laden couldn't just order the US to attack a Muslim nation, to get the result he wanted from the backlash against the attack. How could he get the US to attack?
His small attacks on an embassy here, a small ship there, were not enough to do it. They were news stories for a day.
But if he could launch a big attack on the US's own land, the US would 'have to' respond with an attack on Muslim land - and, he hoped, invade a Muslim country.
That's the thing 9/11 was just right for - and IMO the only thing that makes sense.
And Bush and the rest of the government for war played right into his hands.
Win-win - Republicans got the issue that gave them political power and spending in the areas they want it, and bin Laden got an uprising among Muslims to radicalism. Perhaps not the way he hoped for - the Muslim world is still not pro-Al Queda, the US Muslims have not joined him - but it's still a lot more contentious, Al Queda has a lot bigger presence and visibility, than before.
Osama bin Laden was able to say what his reasons were - picking the popular causes among Muslims to milk the support from those outraged by the US wars. Many here have poked holes in bin Laden's PR - showing his lack of concern and hypocrisy on the issues he said he's concerned about (except bases in Saudi Arabia, which appears to be a real issue for him that helped push him to become radical).
So, which do you want to pick as bin Laden's reason for 9/11?
The PR list he gave that sound good to Muslims that he was recruiting, which he's been shown a phony on, and were not helped by the attack?
Or that his reason was to provoke the US into an excessive retaliation - one of the most common motives for small terrorist groups against a powerful force, getting them to use that force excessively and create enemies (the Muslims in the Bosnia/Serbia conflict did the same thing, shooting police and teachers to provoke a massive government response which they could then point to as 'outrages' by the government - they even hired a US PR firm who launched a campaign comparing the government to Hitler, and it worked).
IMO, ten years after 9/11 that has driven so much of our policy, wouldn't it be nice for America to get the motive for the attack right, finally, and that we played into it?
Our emotional opposition to a mosque near ground zero is exactly what the attackers want - tension between the US and Muslims, making Muslims into enemies.
That's how Al Queda wants to recruit more people, by increasing the conflict between the US and Muslim world. Muslim haters are Al Queda's pawns.
And this is with practically no terrorism on US soil. It's *remarkable* that with millions of Muslims in the US, a good number of them haven't misguidedly turned to terrorism, as the counterpart of the millions of Americans who have turned to hate of Muslims. Even if we did have a number of Muslim terrorist attacks, when most Muslims opposed them, they should not be allowed to serve their purpose of creating hate between non-Muslims and Muslims - but we're seeing that hate even with almost universal 'good behavior'.
It's so easy to create division and hate and fuel war, as history shows, however much we look back and say 'that wasn't worth the human cost'.
The best thing we can do on this for peace and to not let the 9/11 attackers get the war they want is to support a Mosque near 9/11, with our friends the Muslims.
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