November 11, 2003
PSSST...WE WON:
Bin Laden on His Home Turf: Has Osama bin Laden become the Timothy McVeigh of Saudi Arabia? (CS Monitor, 11/12/03)
[S]audi-born bin Laden may have decided he can no longer unite Muslims simply by attacking the West, symbolized by the United States. His real goal, and perhaps his original one, could now be to take over Saudi Arabia and thus Islam's two holiest sites.Sept. 11 had a hint of that.
The Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, said in a speech last month at Tufts University's Fletcher School that bin Laden's goal in organizing the Sept. 11 attacks was to rupture US-Saudi ties. The Al Qaeda chief tried to do that by selecting 15 Saudis among the 19 hijackers, believing the US would then yank its support from the Saudi regime and it would fall. But the plan failed.
Bin Laden also failed to rally Muslims in protest when the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and again when the US invaded Iraq last April (and later withdrew most of its forces from Saudi Arabia). And it's likely that the US has prevented him from launching a new operation in the US.
He's going to unite the entire world in opposition to Islamicism at this rate. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 11, 2003 6:59 PM
Imagine if so many bloggers had gotten their way, and the U.S. had tossed out the Saudi royal rascals as they urged!
Probably not the best way to go...
Posted by: kevin whited at November 11, 2003 10:16 PMWell, if he wants a restored Caliphate, who better to supervise? It is now time to start separating and then killing.
Posted by: jim hamlen at November 12, 2003 4:47 AMThis kind of overreach, in its own primitive way, may rival Hitler's attack on Russia. Saudis' move...
Posted by: Dave in LA at November 12, 2003 6:43 AMIt's hard to unite anybody when your worm food.
Posted by: BJW at November 12, 2003 11:22 AMThis issue arose on the BrothersJudd blog Sept 13. Has any publication other than the Christian Science Monitor(at last) raised the possibility of a campaign to control Saudi Arabia?
re:
The media fails to present any interpretation of 9/11 which DOES NOT place the United States at the center of Osama Bin Laden's agenda. That may be an error. Self-centered perspective tends to be less reliable than landscape perspective.
Apparently OBL became even more determined, after American military forces were stationed on Saudi Arabian soil. To whatever extent this made him infuriated toward the Americans, this made him even more incensed about the Saudi royal family, since they made this blasphemy possible. So OBL hates America even more than he did previously; he despises the royal family even more than [he does] the Americans. So what's a fellow like Osama Bin Laden going to do about such a revoltin' development?
Here's a possibility that is less speculative than Whalid Phares' claims: the 9/11 attack IS part of a progression of attacks(note use of the present-tense "IS" instead of the past-tense "WAS") that serves as a means to another end. That end is, naturally, more meaningful than any particular terrorist incident; also the end is more attainable than such pie-in-the-sky developments as:
national chaos
...Congress would split in two and get paralyzed...
Usama was expecting Americans to attack Arabs and Muslims in sort(sic) of pogroms.
...carpet bomb Afghanistan and many other places.
Let's keep in mind that OBL may have mentioned that such developments might occur, but that's part of a zealot's modus operandi in order to get his followers riled up and inspired.
So what might be a goal, the end that I referred to, for which a decades-long campaign of terrorist attacks would be justified? The goal has to be significant enough to justify the risk that resulted from 9/11. This perspective places 9/11 as a high-visibility event intended to further promote attention to OBL's cause, and to therefore spur the recruitment of additional militant arabs.
The end,(i.e., the goal for the next decade or so,) is the downfall of the Saud family, the family ruling the home of Mecca and Medina. The figurative "radar screens" in the west appear to not discern, that a possible outcome of the OBL/Arab terrorist campaign, is the downfall of the ruling family in Saudi Arabia, into the clutches of an even more fundamentalist arab group. Control of Mecca can be a far greater yearning to such Muslim zealots, than striking at the west in general and the USA in particular. Control of Saudi Arabia is more attainable, and its consequences more predictable, than is taking a risky action to bring about "splitting Congress in two," or carpet bombing, or national chaos. Now keep in mind that OBL may refer to these as possible developments - - he's gotta keep the troops inspired(especially since he claims that the Jewish western press won't admit that these neat things have occurred.)
Unfortunately for the West, OBL has not yet demonstrated a propensity for overreaching; he has methodically proceeded with one onslaught after another. So what is the likelihood that he blew his wad, that he risked and will lose everything in going up against the Infidel nation this time? Unfortunately for us, Osama Bin Ladin has been consistently realistic(as compared with people such as Whalid Phares.) So once again, has OBL made a great leap in his campaign - - a quixotic strike at the USA - - or was 9/11 just another in a progression - - for a goal that is significant not to the West but to these fundamentalist Muslims?
The American notion of "They're out to get us" is pathetic self-centered paranoia. To folks who groove on telling each other, "We're the most powerful country throughout all time, and in the whole World," a self-centered perspective is less unlikely. By the way, these folks underestimate themselves: the USA is the MOST powerful country in the entire .... universe.
The regime changes in Libya and Iran let us speculate what the effect will be of a regime change in Saudi Arabia.