Through Our Enemies' Eyes Page 2

  In preparing this restoration of the original, I have been guided by my original intent: to allow bin Laden to speak for himself and thereby afford American readers the chance to absorb, evaluate, and decide what this war is about for himself or herself. Thus, I have added a good deal of bin Laden’s words, all of which were in the original manuscript, and none of which were spoken after the publication of the book. Indeed, none of the material in this book—with few exceptions, such as the issue of operational ties between al Qaeda and Saddam’s Iraq ties—is based on research materials that became available after the original date of publication. New material or analysis within the main text of the revised edition has been italicized.

  As noted above, I did not focus on incidents of warfare in reconstituting the book, although we have included a comprehensive chronology of the bin Laden versus Crusaders war through 1 October 2005. Indeed, such incidents are increasingly difficult to disaggregate because in places like Iraq, Saudi Arabia, southern Thailand, Mindanao, and Afghanistan the steady day-to-day pace of combat makes few individual incidents stand out. This reality also, I believe, will make it more difficult in the future to assess who is winning in a military sense—insurgencies are notorious for a certain opaqueness.

  Therefore, I focused in this book on restoring materials that pertained to issues that have been particularly misunderstood or ignored in America: bin Laden’s personality; his early years as a nonviolent Saudi dissident and reformer; the substantive issues motivating al Qaeda and its allies, especially their perception that U.S. foreign policy threatens Islam’s survival; the role the Islamic religion plays in that motivation; the relationship among bin Laden, his family, and the rulers in Riyadh, the al-Saud family; and the profound impact the Afghan-Soviet war had and continues to have on bin Laden, al Qaeda, and worldwide Sunni Islamic militancy.

  I also restored material showing that bin Laden is following the path of earlier Islamic soldiers, theologians, revolutionaries, and folk heroes and legends. This to demonstrate that bin Laden, to be understood, must be placed in the continuum of Islamic history, and that he is perceived by Muslims as speaking and acting in a specific historical context and tradition. Also restored is analysis—based on and citing the work of Muslim and Western experts on Islamic law and traditions—showing that bin Laden’s call for a “defensive jihad” is within the purview of an individual who is not a Muslim cleric or scholar and is, for many of these experts, an appropriate response to U.S. activities in the Islamic world.

  Beyond the foregoing, I have restored passages from the original manuscript that address issues about which there has been either confusion or outright ignorance. Among these are bin Laden’s long history of interest in and support for the Palestinian cause against Israel and the West’s pathetic misperception of the brilliant Afghan insurgent commander Ahmed Shah Masood as the sword capable of slaying the Taliban and bin Laden. In addition, I have added as an appendix a chapter that was cut in its entirety from the first edition. The chapter deals with bin Laden’s evolutionary growth as an Islamic hero and leader between 1996 and 2001.

  Finally, and as noted above, I have added a section refuting the analysis in the first edition of this book in which I concluded that there likely was a working relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, especially in regard to cooperation in the field of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons. This is the only part of the book’s main text based on research materials that became available since the date of publication. I have kept the original, incorrect analysis in the text, because the data on which it is based is quoted accurately, but have followed it with several italicized paragraphs explaining the new research and the conclusions I have drawn from it. A professional intelligence officer learns early on never to say never, but I now conclude that, unless and until new data come to light, it is extremely unlikely that there ever was CBRN-related cooperation—or substantive, ongoing cooperation of any kind—between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime.

  While I believe the foregoing discussions will be helpful, it is, at day’s end, bin Laden’s words that matter most. Hearing and understanding them, Americans can see the world as it is, appreciate the dire threat facing their country, and prepare a strategy to defeat it. Without bin Laden’s words, Americans are left with their leaders’ lies, the media’s superficiality, and little chance of preventing their country’s ultimate defeat. That the safety and survival of Americans lies in understanding their enemies’ words, and disbelieving their leaders’, speaks directly to the corrupt, dissolute state of America’s political culture. I suppose the best we Americans can do, for now, is to read what bin Laden says, think for ourselves, and pray our society soon produces another Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, John Bunyan, or William T. Sherman—or perhaps even our own Osama bin Laden.

  Preface

  God Almighty hit the United States at its most vulnerable point. He destroyed its greatest buildings…. I swear by Almighty God who raised the heavens without pillars that neither the United States nor he who lives in the United States will enjoy security before we can see it as a reality in Palestine and before all the infidel armies leave the land of Muhammad, may God’s peace and blessing be upon him.

  Osama bin Laden, 7 October 2001

  The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, but one must be wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time.

  Abraham Lincoln, September 1862

  On 11 September 2001, forces led and incited by Osama bin Laden attacked and utterly demolished the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and heavily damaged the center of U.S. military power at the Pentagon. The human cost exceeded that of Pearl Harbor by nearly a factor of two, the economic cost by an as yet undetermined multiple, and a cost in national confidence and equanimity that dwarfs that inflicted by the Japanese Imperial Navy six decades previously.

  In 1941 U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt described 7 December as a “date that will live in infamy.” The infamy the president described belonged to the Japanese attackers. In the midst of peace talks, Japan had staged a brilliantly executed, stunningly successful, and, as Roosevelt said, “dastardly” surprise attack on the United States. FDR and many Americans believed war was coming to the Pacific, but the cunning and brutality of the attack while negotiations were proceeding shocked the American mind. We were shocked because our own naivete and insularity led us to underestimate the complexity and determination of our adversaries.

  For the decade preceding the attacks in September 2001, we similarly naively assumed that we knew the world, and we were confident that the effective use of the tools and weapons of modernity was impossible for those grounded in twelfth-century Islamic theology. But we have now seen that there is no absolute incompatibility between medieval theology and the use of modern tools, weapons, and technological concepts.

  Tuesday, 11 September, will assume its place on the short roster of dates that live in infamy in U.S. history. But before this occurs, we as a nation must accept the fact that the day was, in many ways, a day of infamy for Americans, the leaders and the led. Bin Laden’s attacks were indeed brutal and stealthy; they were designed to inflict massive civilian casualties; they in every way deserve to be described with Roosevelt’s evocative word—“dastardly.” And, like the Japanese attack on the at-anchor U.S. Navy, they were expertly planned and executed, and by bin Laden’s own admission, they produced even more death and destruction than had been anticipated. “I was the most optismitic of all,” bin Laden said, but the results exceeded “all we had hoped for.”1

  Where the two events part company, however, is that unlike that sunny Sunday morning in 1941, there was far less reason for Americans to have been surprised by the sanguinary events that occurred on the sunny Tuesday morning in 2001. Osama bin Laden publicly declared war on the United States on 2 September 1996; for good measure, he did
so again on 23 February 1998. Since 1996, bin Laden has repeatedly warned Americans—again, always in public—that he would incrementally increase the lethality of his attacks on U.S. interests until we stopped supporting Israel, withdrew our military forces from Saudi Arabia, and ended the embargo on Iraq. During this period, he was true to his word; his forces and those he incited attacked us with steadily increasing skill, lethality, and audacity in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Yemen. He warned that if the United States did not yield to his demands, he would bring the war he was waging into the continental United States.

  When issuing these warnings, bin Laden invariably described his intent as identical to that manifested by Ramzi Ahmed Yousef when Yousef attacked the World Trade Center in New York City in February 1993. Again, promise made, promise kept.

  Without justifying, excusing, or defending bin Laden’s 11 September 2001 attacks, Americans need to recognize that we underestimated bin Laden’s motivation, complexity, and determination. The United States has never had an enemy who has more clearly, calmly, and articulately expressed his hatred for America and his intention to destroy our country by war or die trying. For five years in media interviews, public statements, and letters to the press, bin Laden told us that he meant to defeat the United States and that he would attack—and urge others to attack—U.S. military and civilian targets both in the United States and abroad. In response, the United States never seemed to take bin Laden too seriously, let alone accept the fact that our nation was in the path of real danger.

  Unfortunately, much of this misunderstanding appears to have survived 11 September. In a statement worthy of Lewis Carroll’s consideration for an updated edition of Alice’s adventures, a senior U.S. official said in early 2002 that bin Laden had underestimated America’s readiness to attack al Qaeda on the ground in Afghanistan. As will be shown later in this book, bin Laden has long sought to prompt such an attack, and the following statement—if the phrase “the Taleban and al Qaida” is replaced by the phrase “the United States”—more accurately could have been made by al Qaeda’s chief about his foes. Bin Laden, the U.S. official said,

  did not believe we would invade his sanctuary. He did not know about the collection and operational initiatives that would allow us to strike with great accuracy at the heart of the Taleban and al Qaida. He underestimated our capabilities, our readiness and our resolve.2

  This book is an effort to acquaint Americans with a deadly foe—the forces that have been unleashed by Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network. The draft of this book was completed in mid-June 2001, but the vagaries of the manuscript-to-book process found it unpublished on 11 September 2001. My initial thought after the attacks was to revise the entire work, but while the events of 11 September and after have been dramatic, bloody, and varied, they have not fundamentally altered the story I intended to tell; that is, the activities of the forces bin Laden has led, incited, and inspired—with or without his continued physical presence—are a mortal threat to the United States. Americans need to understand the historical and religious context in which bin Laden and his supporters have acted as well as why these forces emerged. The manuscript I completed last June, I think, still performs this task. Those looking for details about the ordnance, modus operandi, and forged documents used in the September 2001 attacks need to look elsewhere; the purpose of this book is to help awaken the United States to its need to listen to and take heed of explicit warnings both that the bin Laden style of warfare is here for the long term and that the United States can no longer rely on its continental breadth, friendly neighbors, and broad oceanic shores to insulate it from dastardly acts of those Islamists who mean us harm.

  A final word needs to be said about words. The reader who proceeds through this book will notice that I have used some analogies drawn from Anglo-American history. Periodically, the words of the English Protestant preacher John Bunyan and members of the pantheon of American’s founders will appear in the text as epigraphs. Let me hasten to say that I am not in any way inferring a moral equivalence between Osama bin Laden and these heroes of Anglo-American history. The analogies are meant to remind the American reader that the formation of our republic was based on the founders’ theological, political, and philosophical beliefs. Men of honesty, bravery, piety, and integrity, the words of the founders nonetheless unleashed—indeed, they deliberately encouraged—passions, domestic confrontations, and war. In our war of independence, as Wall Street Journal columnist Mark Helprin recently reminded Americans, “we broke free in a long and taxing struggle that affords a better picture of our kith and kin than any the world may have today of who we are and of what we are capable.”3 Recalling Helprin’s analysis and the undeniable power of the founders’ words will stand the reader in good stead. For the threat posed to the United States by the forces unleashed by bin Laden lies not only in his actions, but also in his words and character, and in those of his followers. Like our founders, bin Laden has been viewed by his many followers as a man of faith, intellectual honesty, courage, and integrity, and for that reason the movement he established is a foe that must be understood before his movement can be, as it must be, defeated and eliminated.

  Acknowledgments

  Recognizing assistance for a book published anonymously is tricky, but here goes. First, the support and enthusiasm for this project from the editor and his associates at Sub Rosa Press in Virginia kept me on track and productive. While this book’s subject is far from Sub Rosa’s field, the firm’s editor and his associates steadily aided in the manuscript’s completion and helped place it at Brassey’s in the hands of the firm’s exceptional academic publisher, Mr. Stephen M. Wrinn, and his equally excellent deputy, Ms. Christina Davidson. To Sub Rosa, Mr. Wrinn, and Ms. Davidson, my sincere thanks.

  Next, readers will recognize in this volume’s endnotes the debt I owe to the work, thoughtfulness, and passion of numerous scholars, journalists, and commentators. These individuals—men and women, Muslim and Western—devote their efforts to covering Islam, the Middle East, South Asia, and the interaction of each with the United States. While, as the reader will come to know, I disagree with much that has been written about Osama bin Laden, the variety of these writings and analyses provide a tremendous body of research material. With this work and my own, I have tried to present a portrait of Osama bin Laden that will prompt better understanding of the man—and understanding does not connote sympathy—and a debate about how best to identify, confront, and defeat the threat he poses and personifies. In his review of William J. Cooper’s excellent book Jefferson Davis, American, the historian Peter J. Parish wrote, “Cooper seeks not to defend Davis but to understand him, not to excuse him but to explain him.” I have taken those words as a guide; only the reader can judge my success.

  I also would like to thank several fellow senior civil servants for trying to first prevent and then delay the publication of this book. The manuscript began as a much-shorter primer for civil servants newly assigned to work the issues of Islamism and Osama bin Laden. In that form, my senior colleagues used and praised the work. On broaching my intention to publish, however, their politically correct antennae deployed and their efforts to suppress the work ran a gamut from damning the book because it would offend Muslims to an ominous suggestion that my personal views might well disqualify me from further performance of official duties. After a year of delay over 2000–2001, my request to publish was approved. At day’s end, I would like to thank those who granted my request and those who opposed publication. Indeed, the latter steeled me to press the issue to a conclusion and not yield to men who, in Mark Helprin’s 1998 words, “knowing very little or next to nothing, take pride in telling everyone else what to do.”1

  I too must thank God for the opportunity I have had over twenty years to work with dozens of young U.S. civil servants at home and abroad. The U.S. Civil Service is splendidly stocked with young men and women—particularly women—who take seriously their oath to preser
ve, protect, and defend the Republic, and whose work ethic, intellectual honesty, and personal courage inspire awe and—if unleashed—are more than match for America’s foes, foreign or domestic. Too often, however, their work is stymied by senior officers of my own generation. Mostly men, these senior officers have made careers by keeping silent in the face of unfairness, avoiding risk, and refusing to make decisions. As a result, they have, again in Helprin’s words, allowed America’s power, wealth, and decency to flow “promiscuously” through their hands “like blood onto sand, squandered and laid waste by a generation that imagines history to have been but a prelude for what it would accomplish.” Fortunately, most of the Republic’s younger civil servants recognize with Helprin that this behavior is “more than a pity, more than a disgrace, it is despicable.”2 Often throttled by my generation, these young professionals are coming into their own and soon they no longer will be lions led by donkeys. Again, I thank these lions for what they taught me and pray that I was not too much in their way. And, as God wisely accelerates the pace at which he is culling my generation, I am sure my children and grandchildren, as well as our Republic, will be secure and free because of the talent and devotion of these fine civil servants.

  Finally, I alone am responsible for any errors in this manuscript.

  Introduction

  “It has been nine years since we have been struggling against the United States,” Osama bin Laden told the media in May 1998, “and I am alive in front of you despite all the attempts to kill me. In these nine years we have inflicted considerable damage on the United States and will continue to do the same in the future.”1 Because of such statements, and because the forces of Osama bin Laden destroyed two U.S. embassies in East Africa two months after making the one just noted and eventually brought their attacks to U.S. soil, this study will review and analyze what bin Laden was saying, planning, and doing in those nine years and since—and, indeed, since he emerged as an Islamist leader during the Afghan jihad—and will estimate what those things mean for U.S. interests specifically, and for the West generally. This study emphatically is not a detailed examination of specific terrorist attacks, modus operandi, explosives, and weapons.