US and the World

What bin Laden said

The New York Times > International > Transcript of Al Jazeera Tape

After 9/11 we kept asking ourselves, "why do they hate us so?" We have never really come to grips with that question, in part because we have heard so little from the people who could answer - the people who attacked us.

Here, at last, is a statement that starts to answer the question. You may not believe or agree with the answers. I frankly don' know what to believe from bin Laden. To me he comes from another planet. I do not understand his culture. I do not understand his appeal to fellow Muslim. He does not engender either hate or fear in me. I want him and his movement to stop, but to stop it I first have tounderstand it and I really understand very little of it.

When he complains aboiut America helping Israel to attack Lebanon in 1982, I begin to understand some possible roots of his hatred. Like most Americans, I think I was only half paying attention when we did that more than two decades ago. I couldn't tell you now whether we were justified, or not. Trying to sort out what is fair and just in that whole Israeli/Palestinian mess is extremely difficult.

And I can't help but wonder how honest bin Laden is being here citing that as the roots of his hatred because that happened in 1982 and in subsequent years I did not hear him complaining about all the help we gave him and others who were fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. In the past he has always compained about the American "occupation" of Saudi Arabia. Now that we have pulled out of there, it looks to me like he has switched emphasis and is now complaining about our support of Israel - a complaint that is, I suspect, more popular on the Arab street today.

That said, however, we have few words of explanation from bin Laden or anyone else who has attacked us, so I think what follows is interesting and should be studied - not simply accepted at face value, of course, but studied for whatever truths it may hold. Wars don't arise out of nothing - even Hitler was able to convince a great number of the German people that what he was doing was right and just because there were some truths in his complaints because of the peace terms forced on Germany at the end of WWI. (Very different from what we did after WWII.)

Anyway - here's the bin Laden text as published by Reuters and the NYT.

DUBAI, Oct 30 - Following are excerpts from a speech by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden addressing the American people in a video tape, parts of which were aired by Al Jazeera television on Saturday, as translated by Reuters.

"O American people, I am speaking to tell you about the ideal way to avoid another Manhattan, about war and its causes and results.

"Security is an important foundation of human life and free people do not squander their security, contrary to Bush's claims that we hate freedom. Let him tell us why we did not attack Sweden for example.

"It is known that those who hate freedom do not possess proud souls like those of the 19, may God rest their souls. We fought you because we are free and because we want freedom for our nation. When you squander our security we squander yours.

"I am surprised by you. Despite entering the fourth year after Sept. 11, Bush is still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened.

"God knows it did not cross our minds to attack the towers but after the situation became unbearable and we witnessed the injustice and tyranny of the American-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, I thought about it. And the events that affected me directly were that of 1982 and the events that followed -- when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon, helped by the U.S. Sixth Fleet.

"In those difficult moments many emotions came over me which are hard to describe, but which produced an overwhelming feeling to reject injustice and a strong determination to punish the unjust.

"As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me punish the unjust the same way (and) to destroy towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women.

"We had no difficulty in dealing with Bush and his administration because they resemble the regimes in our countries, half of which are ruled by the military and the other half by the sons of kings ... They have a lot of pride, arrogance, greed and thievery.

"He (Bush) adopted despotism and the crushing of freedoms from Arab rulers and called it the Patriot Act under the guise of combating terrorism.....

"We had agreed with the (the Sept. 11) overall commander Mohammed Atta, may God rest his soul, to carry out all operations in 20 minutes before Bush and his administration take notice.

"It never occurred to us that the commander in chief of the American forces (Bush) would leave 50,000 citizens in the two towers to face those horrors alone at a time when they most needed him because he thought listening to a child discussing her goat and its ramming was more important than the planes and their ramming of the skyscrapers. This had given us three times the time needed to carry out the operations, thanks be to God...

"Your security is not in the hands of (Democratic presidential candidate John) Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands and each state which does not harm our security will remain safe.