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.
