I was browsing around and saw this theory on a religious at the same time educational website...
The Strategy of Osama bin Laden
The goal of the Jihadists to restore Islam to a dominant place in the world today, using "terror" as a strategy, gives us some insight into the mindset of bin Laden when he gave the go-ahead for the attack of September 11, 2001. While the actions of the highjackers were gruesome and incomprehensible to Westerners, they are part of a strategic plan to change the balance of power in the world. The leaders of al Qaeda see the Islamic world being occupied by non-Islamic forces. To change the balance of power in the world al Qaeda must find a way to end the Aoccupation@ and re-unite Islam. Since the United States is the leading power in the world and the patron of many Islamic regimes, it is the power behind the "occupation and, therefore, the great enemy that motivates and controls the anti-Islamic agenda. Defeating the United States directly is not a realistic option. But the kind of war bin Laden has unleashed burdens America with billions of dollars of expenses to fight "terrorism" at home and abroad. It distracts Americans with the constant fear of unsuspected attacks. It makes Americans feel as insecure as Europeans and Israelis have felt for decades. It makes isolationism look more attractive. If, in the process, the United States can be caused to withdraw from the Islamic world, other anti-Islamic powers such as Russia, India and Israel would be helpless to intervene. Corrupt and secular governments in the Muslim world would then have no base of outside support and would be overthrown by the Islamic masses. So al Qaeda does not expect to destroy the United States directly, unless some doomsday weapon comes into its hands. The United States is too powerful and too distant to defeat. Rather, bin Laden's strategy has been to force the United States into a series of actions that destabilize the governments of those Middle Eastern countries that are dependant on Washington. If the United States could be made to look weak and vulnerable in the eyes of the Arab street, the governments of the Middle East would lose their credibility. If pressure from the United States then forces those governments to join the US in fighting Islamic militants or to remain silent in the face of Israeli aggression, popular uprisings could easily lead to their collapse. The ultimate goal would be the establishment of an Islamic superpower, a vast Islamic state stretching from Morocco to the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, governed by Islamic law. Could a bin Laden achieve such goals? He clearly believed the United States does not have the stomach to suppress a mass, popular uprising. Unlike al Qaeda, Americans as a rule do their best not to hurt innocents. The same military that is virtually invincible in battle would have a difficult time handling an army of unarmed women and children. Although the United States has important interests in the Islamic world, they are not on a scale to justify the expense and casualties involved in a long-term occupation. To the degree that further jihadist acts in the US should occur, the American populace could easily sway toward an isolationist stance. If this isolationism should lead to withdrawal from Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia and even the partial abandonment of Israel, the political world would have changed considerably in favor of the Islamic agenda. So from bin Laden's perspective war in diplomatic, economic or military terms would only result in the further humiliation of Islam. But this new kind of war has altered the battlefield odds. Since the targets vastly outnumber the defenders, al Qaeda has designed a war strategy in which it has significant advantages. U.S. power is weakened in that defensive action must be widely dispersed. Suicidal fervor creates a low-tech battlefield in which superior technology is neutralized as a weapon. The goal of the attacks on September 11, 2001 was not to defeat America. America was too powerful and too distant for that to happen. Osama bin Laden's goal was a very strange one from the Western perspective. He wanted to provoke America to attack the islamic world. More specifically he wanted to provoke America to attack Saudi Arabia. Did you notice that 15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11 were Saudis? While the trained pilots were generally from other countries, the "beef" of the operation (the muscle-men who would take over the plane) were almost all from Saudi Arabia. Osama wanted it to appear that this was a Saudi attack on American. While he anticipated the attack on Afghanistan in 2001, he was sure that President Bush would not stop there. In order to stop al Qaeda he would have to control Saudi Arabia as well. Why provoke an attack on Saudi Arabia? Because that is the holy land of Islam, the place where Allah met the prophet Muhammad, the place of pilgrimage, the land of Mecca and Medina. If any action could be calculated to inflame the passion of the islamic masses in the Middle East it would be a Western occupation of the holy places. Osama bin Laden wanted above all else to arouse the fervor of the people to rise up against the invaders and make life so miserable for them that they would be forced to withdraw, as the Soviets were forced to from Afghanistan. Yesterday, Afghanistan. Today, Saudi Arabia. Tomorrow? The world! Does it sound like the demented scheme of a madman? To many it does. But when you consider what other options were available to stimulate a rebirth of Islamic power in the world, bin Laden's scheme doesn't sound so crazy. It was a shrewd calculation that the only way to get rid of corrupt and secular governments in the Middle East was to find a way to humiliate the sponsor of those governments, the United States. Once the sponsor proved powerless, these Arab governments would fall and the Islamic Empire would be reborn. So let me summarize Osama bin Laden's dream scenario. His goal for September 11 was to do something so horrific that the United States would feel forced to invade the Middle East, preferably Saudi Arabia. Osama and his friends could then label it an attack on Islam itself. A guerilla war against the invaders would provoke the Americans to kill and wound many innocent bystanders. The "Arab street," the common, everyday man and woman in the Middle East would rise up in righteous anger against the occupiers. The military might of America would prove helpless against an uprising of "people power," unarmed men, women and children who would be willing to die for their faith. In the face of such an enemy, America would have little choice but to pull back into bases and leave the streets in the hands of the insurgents, much as had occurred in Vietnam years before. Eventually, America would grow tired of the conflict. Media and congress would unite to force the president to withdraw and leave the Middle East to its own devices. In the wake of that superpower defeat, the masses in the Middle East would embrace Islam and Sharia law and the stage would be set for an islamic superpower that could extend from Morocco to Indonesia. That was Osama's dream and it will likely outlive him regardless of the outcome in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.
The Strategy of George W. Bush
But that brings us to the obvious question, doesn't it? In the invasion of Iraq in 2003, wasn't President Bush doing exactly what Osama bin Laden expected and wanted? Wasn't he playing directly in the hands of the jihadists? Wasn't he placing young Americans in an impossible situation where they could be picked off in ones and twos? Wasn't the Iraq adventure doomed from the very start? Then why did he go there? Was it simply bad intelligence about weapons of mass destruction? Was it really all about the oil after all? Here is where the deeper motivations behind the news have been poorly understood. The real geopolitical goals of the Iraq War have been hinted at in the media but rarely spoken out loud. The President himself has been careful never to tip his hand publically, even in the face of just criticism of the goals that were actually stated. Let's briefly go behind the scenes and unravel the deeper actions and motivations that don't always make the news. What did the invasion of Iraq have to do with the war on terror? Why did Bush play bin Laden's game? What was he hoping to gain? The usual reasons make no sense. The invasion was not really about weapons of mass destruction. While it turns out that Saddam Hussein no longer had any weapons of mass destruction, everybody, including the Europeans, believed that he had. Yet in spite of that belief, most did not think that was a reason to invade. The invasion was not really about Saddam Hussein. Sure, he was a rather unsavory character. Sure, he gassed the Kurds and massacred the Shiites. Sure his secret police was killing people right and left. But such events had been occurring for the last twenty-five years and had provoked no American invasion up to that point. Why invade now? The invasion was also not really about control of Middle Eastern oil. The oil was flowing fine before the war. The war has, in fact, driven up prices and created uncertainty. War hinders trade, it doesn't promote it. So all of the public reasons for the invasion make no real sense. The real purpose of the invasion was the dismantling of al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is not a national government. It is not a definable state with borders and institutions that can be destroyed. To dismantle al Qaeda means shutting off the flow of funds, most of which had been coming from Saudi Arabia. To deal with al Qaeda requires co-operation from every nation in which al Qaeda operates. It requires the free flow of intelligence information. It requires people to turn in relatives and friends who are part of the conspiracy. Since al Qaeda has always been rooted in the Arab context, it cannot be defeated without projecting power into the Middle East at some point. Osama bin Laden knew that and included that into his calculations of American behavior. Let me illustrate the problem. It is reported that Osama bin Laden had at least 53 siblings from a variety of different mothers. Many of these were not sympathetic to the goals and methods of the jihadists. Many were living happily in the United States when September 11 occurred. Some, however, were sympathetic. The only way to accurately separate the "jihadists" from the "friends of democracy" in the bin Laden family itself is to be inside the family. In other words, the United States and allied governments need to be able to penetrate such families intimately and encourage brother to "rat" on brother and/or turn them in to the authorities. This is kind of thing is heavily destructive in any close-knit family and will be resisted in most circumstances. The dilemma for the rulers of Saudi Arabia after September 11 was that they had to choose between pleasing the United States, who wanted to root out every potential jihadist in Saudi Arabia, and pleasing their own people, who didn't want such disruptive activities occurring in their own country and in their own families. Why would they choose to please the United States over their own people? After all, if they offended their own people, their own people would be motivated to overthrow them! So there was no way the Saudi rulers would fully co-operate with the United States in "the war on terror" unless they became more afraid of the United States than they were of their own people! In a desperate attempt to distract the United States, the Saudi leadership began floating exciting proposals for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These proposals had no chance of being accepted by those who would be most affected by them, but offering the proposals set conditions for Saudi co-operation in the war on terror that the United States could never fulfill. What the United States heard in these proposals was that the Saudis had no intention of helping to destroy al Qaeda. So how could the United States get at al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia? One option was to invade Saudi Arabia and do the job themselves. But that is exactly what bin Laden was hoping for and would likely have resulted in a mass uprising against the United States. The other option was to raise the threat of invasion to such a high level that the Saudi leadership would become more afraid of the United States than they were of their own people. To do that the United States had to find a way to effectively project power into the Middle East without inflaming the opposition of the Arab masses. The United States had to find a way to convince the average Middle Eastern Arab that the United States was overwhelmingly powerful, even at the street level, and much to be feared, and that al Qaeda could put on a big show, but was essentially weak and could not protect its own. In other words, the United States had to create the perception that the jihadist project was doomed to failure and that casting one's lot with the United States was the more effective way to create positive change in the Middle East. Enter Saddam Hussein. If there was one ruler in the Middle East who was widely despised in the Arab world and whose demise would cause few tears to be shed, it was Saddam Hussein, the secular, oppressive president of Iraq. President Bush gambled that taking out Saddam Hussein would not inflame the Arab street. There would be anger at the presence of foreign occupiers, but it would be a manageable anger. And if Saddam could be replaced by a government "of the people" there might even be some gratitude for American intervention.
