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Abstract
The purpose of this essay is to recall what motivated bin Laden to risk his life, his family, his fortune, and his reputation in confronting the military might of the United States in order to (1) rid the Muslim world of the U.S. presence, (2) overthrow repressive, apostate Muslim regimes not governed by Sharia law, and (3) destroy the state of Israel. The point of understanding bin Laden’s motives is not to excuse any aspect of the barbarous acts he committed, but rather to capture as fully as possible the magnitude of the threat he posed and that which al Qaeda and similar groups, buttressed by his martyrdom, continue to pose.
Acknowledgments
This essay has been adapted from a chapter the author prepared for a forthcoming book titled Chronicles of Romanticism: Toward a New Cultural Consciousness of Romanticism, co-edited by James M. Houston and Alberto R. Coll and to be published by the C. S. Lewis Institute in Washington, DC.
Notes
1 An additional helpful resource on bin Laden is Bergen Citation2006.
2 Apparently lost in bin Laden’s calculations was the fact Americans were being called upon to protect a leading Muslim country (his own) from a socialist Muslim foe led by an atheist, which is how he characterized Saddam Hussain (and all Baathists for that matter), while only a few years earlier he had expressed his gratitude to Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then Saudi Ambassador to the United States, for inducing America to assist Afghanistan in getting rid of the secular, atheist Soviets.
3 Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub (Saladin), the Muslim Sultan of Egypt and Syria, united the Arabs, defeated Richard the Lionheart and his crusader army at the Battle of Hattin, recaptured Jerusalem in 1187, and evicted the European invaders from Arab lands.
4 Other consequences of the U.S. invasion of Iraq included the recruitment of a new generation of militants and the expansion of al Qaeda affiliates from Africa to Asia. It also gave rise to ISIS and an alliance between al Qaeda and Iraqi Baathists.
5 It was European exposure to the madrasas that led to our own university system in the West. One would be surprised to learn how many of the mores and traditions of academe trace back to the madrasas, from the mortarboards, tassels, and gowns one wears at graduation to funding a chair in a given discipline.
6 Quoted in Scheuer Citation2011, 159.
7 Quoted in Scheuer Citation2011, 180.
8 Although they failed in their efforts, al Qaeda has made a number of attempts to secure a nuclear weapons capability (see Scheuer Citation2011, 214, 246). It goes without saying that suicide bombers would have few qualms about using a nuclear device.
9 Three references in particular—Bergen Citation2006, Bergen Citation2021, and Scheuer Citation2011—were indispensable to my understanding of Osama bin Laden and the global impact he had. Bergen was a CNN National Security Analyst, who along with CNN war correspondent Peter Arnett, conducted the first televised interview of bin Laden in March of 1997, a half year after bin Laden declared war against the United States. Published in 2006, The Osama bin Laden I Know does a remarkable job of capturing bin Laden’s personal story and view of the world. Bergen draws from his own interaction with him in addition to insights gleaned from more than 50 interviews with bin Laden family members and associates, ranging from wives and brother-in-law, to his high school English teacher, to the imam of the mosque at which he prayed in Sudan, to his former bodyguard, to other members of Al Qaeda, and to numerous other acquaintances who had personal interactions with him. From these interviews, Bergen elicited a fascinating spectrum of reactions, many of them contradictory in nature: from “arrogant” to “extraordinarily humble,” from “dictator” to “self-sacrificing,” from “not very intelligent” to “the very wisest man.” A key challenge of my essay has thus been to sort through this array of impressions and come up with a reasonably accurate picture of who bin Laden was and what motivated him. Bergen’s second book, The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden, published in 2021 picks up where his earlier effort left off, tracking events that led to the final days of his martyrdom in May of 2011 and, in the process, providing greater clarity on various aspects of his life along the way, as a devout Muslim, a battlefield commander, a terrorist, and a fugitive. Michael Scheuer, chief of the CIA’s newly established bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999, published his own book on Osama bin Laden in 2011 in which he strives to prove bin Laden was “a seminal figure in history whose legacy will continue to pose a serious danger to the West.” He does so in convincing fashion and builds a compelling case for why that seemingly holds true even to the present. In sum, my essay draws heavily from these three remarkable books coupled with my own experience in countering violent extremism while serving as head of the International Center for Religion & Diplomacy for close to twenty years.
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Douglas M. Johnston
Dr. Douglas M. Johnston, Jr. is president emeritus and founder of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy, a Washington D.C.-based NGO that bridges religion and politics in support of peacemaking. Among others, his books include Religion, Terror, and Error: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Challenge of Spiritual Engagement (Praeger 2011), Faith-Based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik (Oxford 2003), and Religion, The Missing Dimension of Statecraft (Oxford 1994).