This is where Americans don't do their homework. Even after the last two videos that OBL put out and detailed all of this information, Americans still refuse to listen to what our government has done and what WE are responsible for. OBL and his groups, at that time, also served another purpose for the U.S. and its allies in the region. Not only were they anti-Communist due to their rejection of its atheism, they were also opposed to the brand of Islamic radicalism promoted by the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran (Khomeini); largely because it was based on Shiite rather than Sunni Islamic doctrine. The revolution had toppled a major ally of the U.S., the Shah of Iran, who played a major role as a pillar of U.S. hegemony in the oil rich Persian Gulf and was threatening key U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other oil rich states. Therefore, the clear aim of U.S. foreign policy therefore was to kill two birds with one stone: turn back the Soviet Union and create a counter-weight to radical Iranian inspired threats to U.S. interests, particularly U.S. backed regimes who controlled the massive oil resources.
Because we wanted to "have our cake and eat it too", our foreign policy in the Middle East has turned into a nightmare for the us and is exactly what led to the attacks in New York and Washington D.C. After the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan in 1989 the "Afghan" network became expendable to the U.S. who no longer needed their services. And as you can see, we have actively turned against these groups after the Gulf War when a number of those groups returned home and moved into the violent opposition against U.S. allied regimes and opposed the U.S. war against Iraq in 1991.
In short, they are particularly opposed to the unprecedented positioning of U.S. ground troops in Saudi Arabia on the land of the Islamic holy sites of Mecca and Medina. If you follow the intelligence agencies at all you will find that in the past decade there has been a vicious war in the region between the CIA and its allies and militant Muslim groups. The U.S. trains Egyptian police torture techniques. Moreover, the CIA has sent snatch squads to abduct wanted militants form Muslim countries and return them to their countries to face almost certain death and imprisonment.
The primary belief of the veterans of the Afghanistan war is that the West, led by the United States, is now waging war against Muslims around the world and now have to defend themselves by any means necessary, including violence and terrorism. They point to a number of cases where Muslims have born the brunt of violence as evidence of this war: the Serbian and Croation genocide against Bosnian Muslims, the Russian war in Chechnya, the Indian occupation of Kashmir, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, the UN sanctions against Iraq and the U.S. backing of dictatorships in Algeria, Egypt or Saudi Arabia, for example. They claim that the US either supported the violence or failed to prevent it. In almost all of these cases, they are correct. It is these beliefs, not to mention the fact that we've been bombing the Middle East for the last ten year and continue to keep adding more military bases over there, that enable them to justify not only targeting U.S. military facilities but also its civilians. And we sit here scratching our heads and wondering why? The "why" is clear for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. There is no question that the one-sided U.S. support for Israel, the U.S. sponsorship of sanctions against Iraq as well as U.S. support for dictatorships across the region have created a fertile ground for some sympathy with such militancy.
Osama bin Laden is not the only mastermind of these attacks as is often claimed in the media; he just facilitates these groups and sentiments with logistics and finances, as do others. He is simply a very visible symbol of this loose network and the U.S. obsession with him most likely works to increase his standing as an icon of resistance to the U.S. A rational person would ask themselves, why he was considered a Hero in the 80's and now considered, by the very government who helped him with training, armaments and finances, the antichrist of the 21st century.
The real problem is that the US refuses to address the root causes of anti-American sentiments in the region. Moreover, the U.S appears to have no long-term strategy to address the sources of grievances that the radical groups share with vast majority of Muslim activists who abhor using violent methods that would include, for starters, a more balanced approach to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, ending the sanctions on Iraq, moving U.S. military bases out of Saudi Arabia, and supporting the legitimate aspirations of regional peoples for democracy and human rights. Legitimate meaning, the majority of the people want and ask for help; not butting your head into a country's affairs when none is warranted and attempting to install your form of government under the banner of "helping" and "nation building" and "democracy" ad nasueum, when all you are really interested in is OIL and contracts.
mg: Something is amiss here. 