Osama Bin Laden went down in history for his obsession with attacking the United States and
its allies - never giving up his mad quest until he was finally gunned down by Seal Team 6 in 2011.
But why was this terrorist mastermind so obsessed
with the United States? Why did he attack the US in the first place?
If you ask many intellectuals, they’ll tell you that most terrorists aren’t powerful criminals,
but rather people driven by desperation to strike out against a government they view
as oppressing them. This applied to many of Bin Laden’s henchmen,
who were sponsored by Al Qaeda’s inner circle to train in its terror camps.
But it did NOT apply to Osama Bin Laden.
Osama grew up in Saudi Arabia, in the lap of luxury as the son of Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden.
To say that the elder Bin Laden was a success would be putting it lightly - he was a billionaire
construction magnate who ensured his family was well taken care of - his very large family at
that! Osama Bin Laden was born in 1957 as a son of Mohammed bin Laden’s tenth wife. In total,
his father had 52 children. His mother divorced the billionaire soon after Osama was born,
but Osama would ultimately inherit at least $25 million dollars from his father.
So he was well taken care of - but where did his radicalism begin?
The Bin Laden family was devoutly religious, but followed a mainstream version of the
Sunni Muslim faith. They were well assimilated into the Saudi culture,
and no one would expect one of the clan to become an infamous terrorist. He didn’t follow a career
path that would lead to extremism either - if you knew him back in the 1970s, you would know him as
a mild-mannered economics and business student in King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. He graduated,
although reports vary on what he majored in. But we do know he briefly attended a class at Oxford.
Those who knew him reported he was passionate about poetry, military history, and soccer.
So how did it all go so horribly wrong?
It all started when he left college in 1979 and went to Afghanistan to fight against…the
Soviet Union. The invasion of Afghanistan had galvanized him to become a political radical,
but he had no reason to hate the United States at that point. In fact,
the United States and Soviet Union were bitter enemies. The groups he worked with,
like the Mujaheddin, even received financial support from the United States as they battled
to hold the Soviets at bay. The Saudis provided support against the Soviets as well, and it seemed
like Bin Laden’s interests were well in line with those of the larger western countries.
But then something changed.
By the time Osama Bin Laden became a public name in the west due to a series of escalating terror
attacks against US interests, his motivation had dramatically changed - and so had his status in
the world. His turn to anti-west radicalism had led to his Saudi citizenship being revoked. After
all, the Saudis greatly valued their alliance with the United States, particularly due to
their rivalry with Iran, and they didn’t want to be associated with a wild card. Bin Laden
found himself a stateless terrorist, finding refuge in countries including Sudan, Pakistan,
and Afghanistan - and he would only surface occasionally to make threatening videotapes.
And on those videotapes, his motivation started to become clearer.
What turned the son of a Saudi billionaire construction magnate into a terrorist
radical? Bin Laden gave many explanations - and not all of them really matched up.
Not long after the 9/11 attacks, Bin Laden released his first new videotape taking credit for
the attacks - and he singled out one main reason for the attack. This was the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, which had been raging for over fifty years at that point. If you asked the Israelis,
they had fended off a genocidal war of invasion against a newborn country and
taken the territory they needed to defend themselves. If you asked the Palestinians
or the surrounding Arab states, they had been expelled from their territory by newcomers
to the region and had been fighting to get their lands back ever since.
But was this regional conflict enough to create a global war?
In a word, probably not. While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict always
makes emotions run high - just ask anyone in the comments section in an article about Gal
Gadot - it was also a relatively small-scale conflict. The conflict over the Al Aqsa Mosque
and the Jewish temple mount was likely the most concerning to a religious zealot like Bin Laden,
but there was one problem with the idea that this was his motivation - prior to this video,
he had never mentioned the conflict before! The odds are that after striking his biggest
blow yet against the US and becoming public enemy #1, he was hoping that
bringing up this hot topic would get him more support from countries in the region.
But other conflicts may have had more to do with his radicalization.
The Gulf War was one of the largest conflicts of the 1990s, with the United States ultimately
stopping Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait - but leaving the Iraqi dictator
in power. Saddam was infamous for his brutal treatment of minority groups like the Kurds,
and frequently attacked US planes entering his airspace. Iraqi forces even attempted
to assassinate former President George HW Bush shortly after he left office. So the
UN imposed sanctions on Iraq as long as Saddam refused to cooperate with
international authorities - and this led to a trade embargo and widespread suffering in Iraq.
And that was enough to get Bin Laden deeply angry.
He first mentioned the sanctions in his 1998 fatwa against Americans, claiming
that over a million Iraqis had been killed by the sanctions and saying that targeting civilians was
permissible due to this carnage. But Bin Laden had no direct ties to the Iraqis and had never
fought in the country - and in fact, Saddam was a very different sort of radical to him.
Saddam led a military dictatorship that had no real alliance with Islamic radical groups - and
when he was deposed by the United States a few years later, it created an opening for Al Qaeda
in the country! So Bin Laden basing his entire worldview around this issue would seem unlikely.
But other conflicts were on his radar as well.
Bin Laden’s manifesto also mentioned countless conflicts regarding Muslims in the world. They
included Russia’s oppression of the Chechen Muslim minority in the Soviet Union, the ongoing border
conflict in Kashmir between Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, the Philippine government’s
conflict with Muslim groups, and Israel’s ongoing northern border conflict with Lebanon. In each of
these cases, Bin Laden said the United States was aiding these groups to oppress Muslims.
There was just one problem with that…
The US had little to nothing to do with any of these conflicts! While they were allies with
some of the countries, the government had little to do with them. In Russia’s assault on Chechnya,
the US had frosty relations with its geopolitical rival at best - even after the
fall of the Soviet Union. The one exception was Bin Laden’s mention of the conflict in Somalia,
where US involvement led to a bloody conflict that was immortalized in the movie Black Hawk
Down. But none of these were conflicts that were particularly close to Bin Laden,
and his inclusion of them started to look more like a list of grievances than a smoking gun.
He had one complaint that didn’t match the others
though- and this one might have some right-wing Americans nodding along.
In his 2002 “Letter to America”, his first time communicating with the outside world
after the 9/11 attacks, he decided to broaden his complaints to America’s domestic conduct.
But he didn’t accuse them of oppressing Muslim Americans - instead, he went on a rant about
America’s immorality. Some of his complaints included the country’s support of promiscuous sex,
gay rights, alcohol and drugs, and gambling. He also oddly complained about trading with
interest - prohibited in Islam, but common in banking around the world.
Was Osama Bin Laden suddenly becoming a culture-critic?
While many anti-American radicals do criticize America’s domestic policies in addition to its
foreign policies while not being fully fleged terrorists - this apears to be another case
like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where Bin Laden seemed to generate a new grievance after
the attacks that put him on the world stage. It’s unlikely that this was his primary grievance that
motivated his attacks, but a savvy propagandist like Bin Laden might have put it in the manifesto
to set Americans against each other. After all, if right-wing Americans start blaming the gay rights
movement for terror attacks, maybe they’ll be too busy fighting each other to find him.
But most experts believe one factor motivated him more than any other.
The year was 1991, and Saddam Hussein had invaded the oil-rich Persian Gulf state
of Kuwait. Even though we’ve already discovered that Saddam Hussein didn’t
fully support Bin Laden’s cause, the roots of his rage may be tied to that war anyway. The
US and Saudi Arabia were closely aligned, and the Saudis quickly invited US troops
onto their soil to launch their attacks on Iraq from there - and to provide some
insurance in case Saddam decides to take his quest for oil even further.
And when the war ended, the US stuck around.
From 1992 to 2003, the US had around five thousand troops stationed in Saudi Arabia,
mostly to conduct air operations over Iraq. While Saddam had been pushed back,
there had never been any formal peace agreement and he continued to behave aggressively towards
his neighbors. This was something the Saudis agreed to and in fact invited - their
security was endangered by Saddam as well, and business relations with the US were important
to both countries. The US presence was vital to protecting the shipping lanes of the Persian gulf.
So why did this fill Bin Laden with rage?
Simple - the US agreed, the Saudis agreed - but no one asked him! While most people involved felt
that the security benefits were worth it, Osama bin Laden viewed even the voluntary presence of
US troops on Saudi soil as an invasion of holy Muslim land. While the troops were
nowhere near the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina, they were too close for this radical.
And there is ample evidence that this might have been the trigger
that turned him into an anti-American militant.
For one thing, it was the only motivation mentioned in the very first fatwa he issued
in 1996 - demanding the US evacuate Saudi Arabia. Two years later, he referred to it as an invasion,
in which the United States had been plundering the country and humiliating its people. He
believed it was a staging ground for an assault on the entire Muslim world,
and repeatedly accused the Americans of being too close to Mecca. The US presence
in Saudi Arabia would eventually end when the second war with Iraq began, due to the Saudis
opposing that conflict, but this was the only motivation that Bin Laden kept coming back to.
Which means ironically, Osama Bin Laden’s reason for wanting to declare war on America may have
been that his home country invited them in - to protect them from a hostile neighbor. Of course,
if you ask ten people why Osama bin Laden hated America, you’ll probably get ten
answers - and most of them will reflect the person’s opinions more than the truth.
Want to learn more about Osama bin Laden’s beginnings? Check out “How
the CIA Funded a Terrorist Organization”, or watch “How SEAL Team Tracked Down Osama
Bin Laden (Minute By Minute)” for how it all came to an end.