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!
in my knowledge
mujahideen helps the US to repeal soviet influence
bin laden family becomes a huge construction and real state enterprise
dubya was tanking in polls
revolutionary spirit was getting serious around middle east with gaddafi, hussein, iran et al, probably threatening the business interests of the bin laden group
the US was needing moar oil and israel needed more support and they had to do something about those pesky socialists of fatah
they create a casus belli against islam and new revolutionary movements in middle east accusing them of being terrorists
some convenient planes destroy a couple of buildings in the US killing useless innocents
dubya can better his ruined reputation, bin laden family can keep the gravy train going, and everything arabic against israel and america becomes “muslim terrorism”
for some reason, “al qaeda”, a extremist muslim group who hates jews but attacks every country in the middle east except israel, becomes the symbol for islamic fundamentalism
In other words, you suspect 9/11 was tacitly allowed to provide an excuse for the US to invade the Muddle East?
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.
I don’t know how truthful bin Laden is being in this letter, but the letter implies that he is an Islamic nationalist who presumably expected the U.S. to fund his own Islamic nation-building project (which happened to oppose the Soviet Union at the time), and was very pissed when they pulled funding and continued interfering after the Soviet Union collapsed.
Are you fucking serious? He literally answers your exact question in his letter, “ Why are we fighting and opposing you?”
Bin Laden was fine taking funding from the Americans to fight the Soviets, so he had no immediate problems with the Americans before. Most likely he viewed communism as a more immediate threat to his Islamic goals than the Americans. But then after the USSR collapsed, he turns around and fights the Americans.
If what he says in the letter is truthful, then I can only say that his principles are remarkably consistent as he is quite willing to fight the people previously bankrolling him.
Do you not know what pan-Arabism is?
The US and the West systematically destroyed pan-Arabism for its anticolonial and socialist leanings. If bin Laden was truly pan-Arabist, he wouldn’t have taken money from the USA to destroy socialist Afghanistan and fund Salafi jihadists to destroy Ba’athist Syria.
Bin Laden was maybe pan-Islamist, but pan-Islamism was explicitly anti-socialist, was even less popular than pan-Arabism, and was never seriously considered by country leaders to unite the Middle East.
Pan-Arabism is not a left wing ideology. That’s like saying Zionism is a left wing ideology.
Pan Arabism is a nationalist ideology. Its goal is the formation and supremacy of one Arab nation. And like Zionism, this excludes anything other nations that live on the same land and within the same economic system.
Socialism must necessarily be internationalist.
Pan-Islamism is similarly also a right wing ideology, because it calls for cultural hegemony of all muslims under Islam.
The west destroyed pan-Arabism because it stands in opposition to western imperialism via Israel. (And to a lesser degree through the gulf states) Literally in the letter.
It’s not uncommon for right wing ideologies to fight, especially given the nature of right wing ideologies.
Gotcha, thanks for the heads up. I didn’t know most pan-Arabists weren’t based like Nasser and Gaddafi.
In other words, the US backed bin Laden because his pan-Islamist beliefs were useful to fight against the USSR and Arab socialist-ish countries, but didn’t expect him to stick to his beliefs after the collapse of the USSR. Bin Laden felt that the US replaced the USSR as the colonizer stonewalling his Pan-Islamist vision, so attacked the US like he did the USSR.
“Blowback” part 4 documentary tells the story in depth of everything previous to 2001 and after 2001. There’s around 10 hours of breakdown of history in there, it’s really well made and researched. If you have the time to fully understand the situation and all the complex factors, take a look at it
Thanks, I’ll listen to it!
Read it ages ago, but “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” by Lawrence Wright did a decent job of stringing things together in a mostly balanced package, if I am remembering correctly.
Thanks, I’ll give it a read!
