Dr. Nathan S. French
In November 2023, references to Usama bin Ladin leapt by 4,300 percent across social media. Users of Tiktok, X, YouTube, Instagram and other sites began encountering posts, videos, and debates that included references to – and, in some cases appeared to voice support for – a “Letter to America” claimed to have been authored by Usama bin Ladin between October 6 and October 14, 2002. By that Thursday, news coverage noted that all such videos violated rules against “supporting any kind of terrorism,” but downplayed the scale of the “trend” of such stories on their platforms.
When Bin Ladin’s letter was published in English-language media in 2002, the United States had been at war in Afghanistan for one year. In September 2003, months before “Facebook” went live for the first time, a Washington Post poll found that almost 70 percent of Americans thought that Saddam Hussein was at least somewhat likely to have been personally involved in the 9/11 attacks.” The publication of the 9/11 Commission Report by the National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States settled the question of Hussein’s possible involvement, noting no clear links.
Though the linkages to Saddam Hussein fell apart, as the U.S. approaches the quarter-century mark since September 11, 2001, many members of the public, if asked, may struggle to answer any of three questions: 1) Why did al-Qaʿida undertake the attacks on September 11, 2001; 2) What was Bin Ladin’s goal for the attacks? and 3) What was al-Qaʿida’s strategic goal for the attacks? For many Americans, the answer to these questions is straightforward and simple: Usama bin Ladin hated America, hated Americans, and sought to wage a violent struggle against the West in the pursuit of a totalitarian and authoritarian hegemony for his maximalist worldview. In short, they note, “Bin Ladin hated America for its freedoms.”
In the decades since the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, however, numerous articles, analyses, and histories have been written of Bin Ladin and al-Qaʿida. To study these analyses – to encounter Bin Ladin and al-Qaʿida’s arguments in their own words – is not an exercise in sympathy. Far from it. After all, in several of his letters, Bin Ladin drew upon antisemitic tropes (e.g., “Worldwide Zionist conspiracies” in the letter, also found in U.S. white supremacist propaganda) and he cited the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (itself a product of Russian pogroms put to pernicious use by the Nazi Reich). Yet, much as students might study the white supremacist positions of the Confederate States of America or the Nazi Reich, so too might they encounter Bin Ladin and his al-Qaʿida movement in their curriculum.
Why did al-Qaʿida attack the United States?
As an organization, al-Qaʿida traces its origins to the close of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which lasted from 1979-1989. In this narrative, the al-Qaʿida organization formed in 1988 out of an organization that Bin Ladin had founded along with a Palestinian Arab fighter in Afghanistan named Abdullah ʿAzzam. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, however, Bin Ladin’s movement went by various names, among them the “World Islamic Front for the Struggle against Jews and Crusaders” – an over reference to his demand for violence and terrorism to be undertaken against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States.
From the beginning, Bin Ladin had always intended al-Qāʿida to operate both as a principle or foundation – a guideline that could be downloaded like software and replayed in varying contexts. The training camps in Afghanistan – the formal, institutional aspects of the movement – were therefore to be understood as capacity builders, attracting, recruiting and training members from across the world who would assist Bin Ladin in his global struggle.
As the 1980s and 1990s unfolded, however, the movement evolved in its objectives. In the mid-to-late 1990s, Ayman Zawahiri, the former head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (the assassins of Sadat, the shooters of Luxor) had proposed to Bin Ladin to unify the Egyptian Islamic Jihad with al-Qaʿida and, he began to describe this organization that would form in his writings as a “jihadi-salafi” movement or trend in Islamic thought.
What is their creed?
- Jihadi-salafis argue that most Muslims aren’t Muslim — only their authentic expression of Islam is acceptable, and violent struggle (jihad) for territory is the only way to attain it
- Muslims and non-Muslims who commit actions – like participating in democratic processes – forfeit their right to be considered “innocent” in the estimation of Bin Ladin
- There is a territory of peace (i.e., territories under what Bin Ladin considered to be “legitimate” Muslim rule) and a territory against which war must be directed
- War between the two should be focused on the far enemy – the United States
- Jihad may not be separated into violent and non-violent tendencies, They are both together.
- All Muslims should understand they are in a state of emergency, fighting a defensive war, all classical interpretations of jihad must be set aside – including protections of women and children, and clauses related to suing for peace.
Overwhelming majorities of Muslim communities across the globe rejected Bin Ladin and Zawahiri’s ideology. For Bin Ladin and Zawahiri, the majority of the world’s Muslims should be regarded as no different than those who are non-Muslims. For both men, and those who followed them in al-Qaʿida, all such communities could be targeted in terrorist, guerrilla, and other illegitimate attacks.
In his “Letter to the Americans” and in other letters, Bin Ladin laid out arguments that the United States had occupied Muslim territory (in Saudi Arabia), usurped Muslim wealth, had supported non-democratic and oppressive authoritarian rulers, and had killed thousands of innocent Muslims in numerous unjust campaigns. For Bin Ladin, al-Qaʿida’s war on the United States was – in their estimation – a war in self-defense.
What were Bin Ladin’s Goals?
Throughout his life, Bin Ladin continually adjusted and re-adjusted his messaging for his goals for the September 11, 2001 attacks. Anne Stenersen, a Norwegian researcher whose work focuses on al-Qaʿida’s work in Afghanistan – especially prior to September 11, 2001, argues in her work al-Qaida in Afghanistanthat there are two dominant views Bin Ladin had before September 11, 2001:
- Attack and draw the United States into a costly, long-term guerrilla war in Afghanistan that would erode U.S. domestic support for wars and foreign involvement abroad
- Fracture, divide, and crumble the United States socially, culturally, and politically, causing it to withdraw into self-isolation (no desire for foreign support or engagement), diminish its international ability to act
After the attacks, however, Bin Ladin’s public messaging suggests a subtle shift. Research into al-Qaʿida by Nelly Lahoud as well as by Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 suggests a tremendous disruption of al-Qaʿida’s day-to-day operations. In this span of time, Bin Ladin’s public-facing narratives change. By the time of the “Letter to the Americans” and, several months later, the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, Bin Ladin began to emphasize narratives of what he considered to be the hypocrisy of the U.S. and of Americans toward Muslim communities.
The letter trafficked in anti-U.S. conspiracies once launched by the KGB in Afghanistan claiming that the U.S. invented AIDS as a weapon, it launched homophobic attacks, and traded in vile antisemitic conspiracies dating to tsarist-era Russian pogroms. These were intermixed with critiques of historical events, climate change, and global consumerism. Central to the argument of the piece – a repetitious argument that Bin Ladin calls for Muslims to realize that they are engaged in a defensive struggle for Islam against the United States.
In the second half of the letter, however, Bin Ladin argued that the U.S. failed – as a nation – to live up to its values after September 11. The U.S. he notes, as an example, refuses to take responsibility for its role in global climate change and pollution, having pulled out of several major climate treaties. He also argued that the U.S., with its implementation of enhanced interrogation techniques – including techniques later deemed by the U.S. Senate to be torture – violated the treaties and agreements that it had once used to uphold as examples of its commitments to global human rights.
Bin Ladin was speaking from the perspective of what he thought America had gotten “wrong.” Arguably, his hope was that he would inspire audiences to reflect upon his narratives of American “hypocrisy” in order that they would abandon the U.S. Such an idea – that the U.S. and international community would live up to their commitments to human rights, treaty obligations, and principles of justice and equality – were themes that would be later echoed by fighters in ISIS (or “Da’ish”), whose violence spread globally amid the Syrian Civil War.
Islamophobia and its Legacies
Scholars will continue to analyze and debate the enduring legacies of Bin Ladin’s attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. Yet, among the themes to which they return, is the hope of jihadi-salafi groups like al-Qaʿida and ISIS to continue to foster violence attacks against civilians in order to provoke international security responses that target Muslim populations disproportionately. In short, Islamophobia is – in part – a continued strategic goal of such movements and, as a goal, it reflects a central objective of Bin Ladin. As global Muslim communities condemned al-Qaʿida and ISIS repeatedly, western organizations like Human Rights Watch worked to draw attention to policymakers that disproportionate uses of force risked unintentionally meeting the goals of militants. Since 9/11, the U.S. Department of Justice continues to work to prosecute bias crimes and incidents of discrimination against Muslims, Sikhs, and persons of Arab and South Asian descent. Bin Ladin gambled that his attacks would alienate Muslim from non-Muslim and non-Muslim from Muslim in the hope that the United States would never live up to its democratic principles – including the rule of law and equal justice before it.
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Government Documents
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report. 2004. (link)
Primary Sources
Kepel, Gilles and Jean-Pierre Milelli, Al Qaeda in its Own Words. Cambridge: Harvard Belknap Press, 2010.
Usama bin Ladin, “To the Americans,” in Messages to the World: The States of Osama bin Ladin, Bruce Lawrence, ed., and James Howarth, trans. (London: Verso Books, 2005), pp. 160-172
Usama bin Ladin, “Letter to the American People,” The Guardian, November 24, 20024, archived on the Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20021127013312/http://www.observer.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,845725,00.html (accessed August 2024)
Documentaries & Podcasts
PBS Frontline, “Inside al Qaeda,” (link)
PBS Frontline, “In Search of Al Qaeda,” (link)
Peter L. Bergen, “On The Trail and Inside the Mind of Osama bin Ladin,” In the Room, September 5, 2023 (link)
Popular Media & Websites
John Miller, “Greetings, America. My Name is Osama bin Laden…” PBS Frontline (1999), link
National 9/11 Memorial & Museum (link)
The Guardian, “Removed: document,” November 15, 2023 (link)
Scholarship, Histories & Journalistic Accounts
Bergen, Peter L. The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2022.
Beydoun, Khaled A. American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018.
Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. New York: Penguin Books, 2004.
Coll, Steve. Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. New York: Penguin Press, 2018.
Fishman, Brian. The Masterplan: ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Jihadi Strategy for Final Victory. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.
Hegghammer, Thomas. Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Jackson, Sherman. “Jihad and the Modern World,” Journal of Islamic Law and Culture 7, no. 1 (Spring / Summer 2002): 1-26.
Lahoud, Nelly. The Bin Laden Papers: How the Abbottabad Raid Revealed the Truth about al-Qaeda, Its Leader and His Family. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022.
Levy, Adrian, and Catherine Scott-Clark. The Exile: The Stunning Inside Story of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda in Flight. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2017.
Ryan, Michael. Decoding Al-Qaeda’s Strategy: The Deep Battle Against America. Illustrated edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.
Stenersen, Anne. Al-Qaida in Afghanistan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. New York: Knopf, 2007.
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