I have not seen a good explanation on this from Americans, who usually peddle the brainless “they hate our freedom” line. Lemmygrad is also sorely lacking any good discussions on this topic.
The U.S. funded the mujahideen to drain Soviet resources in Afghanistan. This makes it rather strange that after the Soviet Union collapsed, Al-Qaeda (one of the factions in the mujahideen) would turn around and bite the hand that fed them.
Was Al-Qaeda dissatisfied with some aspect of U.S. treatment toward them and expected the 9/11 attacks to change that? Or did the U.S. and Israel tacitly allow or even encourage the attacks to provide an excuse to dominate the Middle East?
I would love more sources and reading on this that aren’t just pro-US-empire propaganda!
I think it was a combination of them supporting the most religious extremist members of the Mujahideen in order to use that as a motivation to fight the USSR, and continual western provocations and interference in the Middle East. Around this time, the UK was in Afghanistan, they were both heavily involved with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iraq, etc. They had been doing coups in Iran, supporting Israel, etc.