September 24, 2001

Do They Really Want to Finish the West?
Cool heads are needed soon

"They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."

~ President George W. Bush's speech to congress.

Is that why they killed 7000 people, as a statement against American democracy? Was it really because of the multiplicity of churches that men sacrificed their lives in an attempt to end thousands more? It may sound good that these terrorists were simply motivated by hatred of much of what is great about America, but is it true?

I am not asking whether they hate democracy or freedom of speech, let's take this hatred for granted. I would suggest that it is irrelevant. After all, they hate atheistic Marxism, yet they have not been bombing North Korea. For that matter, they did not bomb Denmark, which has democracy, freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Why did they choose America?

The best thing to do on this is go to the source, and I am talking about the pronouncements of Osama bin Laden. On many occasions, he has declared war on the United States, and the sort of nasty total war that involves killing civilians "in any country in which it is possible to do it". Nevertheless, does he, and by extension the extreme Islamicists in general, see it as a war of annihilation?

The answer would seem to be no. There is no doubt that there is a twisted mind at work here, and one that it is hard to fathom. Let's take his second paragraph:

Praise be to God, who revealed the Book, controls the clouds, defeats factionalism, and says in His Book "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)"; and peace be upon our Prophet, Muhammad Bin-'Abdallah, who said I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but God is worshipped, God who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my orders.

This is more than standard Islamic boilerplate. This is blood curdling and somewhat meandering prose – and all in one sentence. It would be far too easy to spend the rest of the column mocking the tortured language of the statement, even allowing for the fact that it is translated out of Arabic. Easy, but unprofitable. For readers of this column, and Antiwar.com in general, tune in because they want analysis that they will not find in the mainstream press. What we need to know is what motivates this man and those he inspires.

There are three grievances, which I will list. Firstly, there are American troops on Saudi soil:

First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorising its neighbours, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighbouring Muslim peoples.

Why is Saudi Arabia the "holiest of places"? It's because it has the two cities Mecca and Medina. Foreign – in most cases infidel – troops are deeply offensive to bin Laden and his followers. They are obviously a scapegoat for much else that is endemically wrong with Saudi society – and occupation is a perverse way of describing a deployment that was invited in by the Saudi royal family – but they are nonetheless resented.

There is also a rage against the actions of America against Iraq:

Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once again trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.

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Emmanuel Goldstein is the pseudonym of a political drifter on the fringes of English classical liberal and Euro-sceptic activity. He is a former member of the Labour Party, who knows Blair and some of his closest buddies better than they realise, yet. He has a challenging job in the real world, working for a profit-making private company and not sponging off the taxpayer in politics, journalism or the civil service. "Airstrip One," appears Mondays at Antiwar.com.