The shocking truth about Osama bin Laden: apparently, he reads our blogs

Reason, May, 2006 by Brendan O'Neill

WHEN AL JAZEERA broadcast Osama bin Laden's latest audiotape in January, it provoked the same sense of deja vu as Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, recently published by the leftist publishing house Verso.

The book is a collection of every public utterance made by the Al Qaeda leader from 1994 to 2004. According to The Observer's excitable reviewer, it shows that he is a "charismatic man of action, an eloquent preacher, a teacher of literature and a resilient, cunning, wonderfully briefed politician." To me, however, there was something irritatingly familiar rather than surprisingly eloquent about his tone and turns of phrase.

Then it struck me: Bin Laden is a blogger. Not literally, of course, but he certainly speaks the language of the blogosphere. He references Robert Fisk and Michael Moore, those darlings of the anti-warWeb. His latest statement recommends that people read Rogue State by William Blum, whose e-mail newsletter, Anti-Empire Report, is frequently republished and discussed in the left-wing blogosphere. Bin Laden repeats criticisms of Bush and conspiracy theories about 9/11 that I have read a thousand times on a thousand blogs.

It is often said that the blogging explosion was a by-product of the September II attacks, as people launched online diaries to try to make sense of those shocking events. Here's a thought: Perhaps bin Laden himself turned to the blogosphere after 9/11, in search of theories and arguments with which he might justify his murderous assault.

The latest statement reveals the extent to which bin Laden borrows from Western discussions of the Middle East. He seems less a man with a clear religious or political agenda than a parasite feeding off the fear and loathing of his enemies. Indeed, bin Laden has scolded President Bush for ignoring "U.S. opinion polls which [indicate] that the overwhelming majority of you want the withdrawal of the forces from Iraq." He seems a little obsessed by opinion polls. Shortly after the Madrid train bombings in March 2004, he cited "opinion polls showing that most people in Europe want peace." What kind of warrior for God needs to conjure up the authority of opinion polls--rather than, say, the authority of Allah--to justify himself?

This latest message also talks about the "psychological pressure" on U.S. soldiers in Iraq, criticizes the news media for not showing the truth about the war, and cites humanitarian reports on conditions at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. It contains very little about religious or political first principles; instead bin Laden leaps on Western doubts about Bush's venture in Iraq and makes them his own.

Bin Laden's reliance on Western theorizing about the reasons for Al Qaeda's existence and actions is clear in Messages to the World. Reading his statements from 1994 to 2004, one can see clearly that he transforms himself from a religious crank obsessed by Saudi Arabia (circa 1994) to a self-described warrior for Palestine (around 2001-02) to a full-fledged Bush basher (from 2004 onward). His campaign is shaped less by his own program of ideas or aims than it is by the West's interpretation of that campaign.

In 1994 bin Laden's big concern was that his birthplace, Saudi Arabia, wasn't chokingly religious enough for his liking. By 2001, however, he was defining himself as a fighter for Palestine. When a quick-witted Al Jazeera journalist challenged him about that shift, Bin Laden explained, "Some of the events of recent times might foreground a certain issue, so we move in that direction."

Here's a more plausible account: Numerous commentators in the West presumed that 9/11 was payback for American policy in the Middle East, and especially its support for Israel against Palestine, so bin Laden, previously a Saudi obsessive, adopted those arguments as his own. Even before 9/11, Al Qaeda's occasional nods to Palestine were at best a cynical attempt to connect with the Arab masses through the Arab media.

Bin Laden's justifications for 9/11 also changed in tune with Western theories. At first, in September 2001, he disavowed responsibility for 9/11, instead pinning the blame on some dastardly conspiracy within America itself. He talked about "a government within the government in the United States" that may have facilitated the attacks because "there are intelligence agencies in the U.S. which require billions of dollars of funds from the Congress and the government every year." Such theories will sound familiar to anyone who happened upon conspiracy theory Web sites or some of the wackier blogs in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

By October 2001, bin Laden was celebrating 9/11'S impact on America's economy and sense of resolve, talking about "the psychological shock of the attack" and how it cost the Americans an estimated "$140 billion" and led to 170,000 employees being "fired or liquidated" from airline companies. Here he cherry-picked from reports of job losses and predictions of doom that were widespread in the Western media after 9/11 and claimed ownership of them, as if they were part of his plot.