It’s kind of amazing now in my middle age to read quotes from Osama from the late 90s and later where he lays out, articulately, his exact reasons for his actions and what it would take for him to stop.

Raised in Burgerland I kind of always took for granted the narrative that “he was a bad dude doing bad stuff.” I mean, he’s the 9/11 guy. Is that worth reading further into? Yes.

When you really get to the root of his stated grievances and conditions for ending his aggression against the US, it actually… makes perfect sense. I don’t know much about Islam and I can’t comment much on how devout he might’ve been, or if his actions are ever sanctioned within the faith. I also kind of don’t care because you don’t even need Islam to explain his beliefs and actions towards the US.

And before I continue: I can’t read or do anything with Arabic. So, I have to take translations from Osama at face value that the translators in the west quoted him fairly and correctly. This is me prefacing: he was apparently very anti-Semitic and has quite a few quotes directed at what I would like to think he meant “Israelis” but the translators went with “Jews.” And I say this not to “excuse antisemitism” but rather because 1) let’s be honest, the western world CONSTANTLY equates Israelis with Jews and they do that on purpose so that criticism of Israel is de facto antisemitism and 2) he’s specifying Jews within the context of speaking about America supporting Israel, which is a Jewish ethnostate. Maybe he did hate all Jews everywhere, I dunno, but in the interview I was reading it seemed to me he was condemning Jewish Israelis for their atrocities and further condemning Americans for supporting Israel. I really have no interest in defending his Jewish remarks. I just took it as “yeah, he probably did hate “the Jews” as far as he knew them: the people who murdered Palestinians.” It doesn’t justify that racism, obviously, but much like Palestinians now, 20+ years later, it’s an understandable resentment for the people who oppress you. Again, not justified, but understandable. I hate that I need like 30 levels of nuance here, but, I also understand why it is needed. (And yet people still read into shit what they want to anyway, so why bother, I might ask myself).

Bin Laden said that the American military would leave Saudi Arabia, regardless of the fact that the Saudi royal family welcomes the American presence. “It does not make a difference if the government wants you to stay or leave. You will leave when the youth send you in wooden boxes and coffins. And you will carry in them the bodies of American troops and civilians. This is when you will leave.”

Civilians?

“We do not differentiate between those dressed in military uniforms and civilians; they are all targets in this fatwa.” Bin Laden argued that American outrage at attacks on American civilians constitutes a great double standard.

“American history does not distinguish between civilians and military, not even women and children. They are the ones who used bombs against Nagasaki. Can these bombs distinguish between infants and military? America does not have a religion that will prevent it from destroying all people.”

Bin Laden believes that what we consider to be terrorism is just the amount of violence required to get the attention of the American people. His aim is to get Americans to consider whether continued support of Israel is worth the bloodshed he promises.

“So we tell the Americans as people,” bin Laden said softly, “and we tell the mothers of soldiers and American mothers in general that if they value their lives and the lives of their children, to find a nationalistic government that will look after their interests and not the interests of the Jews. The continuation of tyranny will bring the fight to America, as Ramzi Yousef and others did. This is my message to the American people: to look for a serious government that looks out for their interests and does not attack others, their lands, or their honor. And my word to American journalists is not to ask why we did that but ask what their government has done that forced us to defend ourselves.”

Even leaving Islam out of it, the desire to see Americans leave Saudi Arabia seems reasonable. Who wants another nation’s military hanging around, especially when they’ve had a history of killing and instigating your people and nearby nations? We had no fucking business being there.

And similarly Israel has no business existing as it does which is basically just an extension of US power into the Arab world. I know Americans and Israelis like to represent it as some justifiable retaking of Biblical lands… sure. Just like the subjugation of the Americas was justifiable “manifest destiny.” I don’t think it’s unreasonable, and holy shit you can’t utter this basically anywhere in the US lol, to consider Osama to be akin to a Native American leader whose family was friendly with encroaching European white people, but one of the sons basically says “fuck that shit” and builds a resistance army in the mountains and continually harasses the white armies. A completely justifiable and righteous cause fighting against impending genocide and enslavement. He saw the plight of the Palestinians, the way his own family and the royals his father befriended bent over for the Americans and he saw that they allowed horrible stuff to happen and they allowed these people to trample through what he regarded as untouchable holy land. I mean, I know Americans are brainbroken, but isn’t this guy the hero of every story? Yeah he had a lot of blood on his hands, and I’m not going to justify specific events, but ultimately his reasoning for doing so was “get the fuck out of my country, my family’s country, and Palestine. Then this will end.”

I can tell just from reading through some of his interviews that the dude was incredibly charismatic. You can tell why people were drawn to follow him and why the US, despite the fact that they should’ve known better, wanted to prop him up as the evil satanic figure to destroy. The problem is… the dude was right about, I mean, basically everything as far geopolitics goes, US foreign policy, true interests and nature of the US government. He even called it back in 1999 that American soldiers had no will to fight unlike the Soviets. He basically mocked the US military for letting his people kill and humiliate Americans and they just left a couple weeks later. I mean, goddamn dude. He really laid out the stakes and he really called America on its bluff. “Are you willing to continue dying for this land which you don’t care about? We will ensure that you do indeed die if that’s the case.” The obvious answer was FUCK NO once the patriotic fervor died down after 9/11, no one wanted to go die in Afghanistan. He’s fighting for his friends, his holy land, countries and lands that he loves. Americans weren’t even fighting for an ideology like one could potentially argue Soviets were. They were just there for a vague idea of “freedom” and anger at some building they never heard about before 9/11 being blown up. It’s really no wonder we got our asses kicked. And we deserved it.

I dunno, reading through his quotes I’m just left feeling sad.