Gwynne Dyer, ContributorOSAMA BIN Laden is a master of the art of public relations, and his videotaped message on Friday, October 29, was a little masterpiece of spin and misdirection. All that nonsense about how he decided to attack the "towers" of New York when he saw the "towers" of Beirut under attack by the Israelis and the US Sixth Fleet in 1982, for example.
When Israel invaded Lebanon and the US sent troops to help, Osama probably didn't like what he saw, but he hadn't even gone to Afghanistan and become a mujahedin yet. He didn't spend 19 years planning the 9/11 attacks. And as for telling Americans that they will be safe if only they stop attacking Arab and Muslim countries - "Your security does not lie in the hands of Kerry, Bush, or al-Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. Each and every state that does not tamper with our security will have automatically assured its own security" it is a cynical lie.
ATTEMPTED REVOLUTIONS
The main purpose of the 9/11 attacks was to lure the United States into military intervention in the Muslim world, in the belief that that would outrage Muslims and drive them into the arms of the Islamists. Within the Arab world (where the vast majority of the Islamists live), their attempted revolutions against regimes they condemn as secular and/or sold out to the West in Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Algeria had been stalled for 25 years because they were unable to win enough popular support. So maybe they could sucker the Americans into creating it for them.
Mere terrorism never overthrows governments. Terrorism is a useful device for getting your name and programme before the public in a dictatorship where you cannot openly advocate your political ideas, but the end-game of revolution usually requires a million people in the street, willing to risk their lives to bring the target regime down and put you in its place. For the Islamists, the million people just won't come out.
For a quarter-century, the Islamists have been stuck in a bloody stalemate with the various regimes they seek to overthrow. Osama bin Laden's claim to fame was his insight that popular support for the Islamists might finally be boosted up to the level needed for successful revolutions if they could lure the United States into even deeper military involvement in the Muslim world - full-scale invasions, if possible - that would drive millions of Arabs into the Islamists's arms.
That was what 9/11 was about, and it failed.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
