Word: ladens
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...indicates that bin Laden’s organization maintained clandestine operatives in the country after the Sept. 11 attacks. Furthermore, the Associated Press reported that the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—an important al Qaeda operational planner captured in March—produced evidence that bin Laden himself was responsible for managing the tactical scale of the attacks. Taken together, this information suggests that al Qaeda had the operational sophistication, the opportunity and the in-place assets to plan and execute broader strikes against domestic targets in late 2001, but chose...
While bin Laden may dream of the destruction of the U.S., evidence suggests that he is too smart, too well-educated and too strategically sophisticated to believe that it is a rational possibility. It is likely, instead, that bin Laden and the al Qaeda network are working towards the more limited goal of Islamic revolution in the Gulf States and the eventual establishment of autocratic Islamic theocracies. Of all things, bin Laden despises the United States for the presence of its military forces in Saudi Arabia. His motives for the strategic attacks against the United States, therefore, were the same...
Recognizing that he could not lead a standard insurgency in Saudi Arabia—largely because the U.S. military was there by invitation, not force—bin Laden instead needed to galvanize the moderate Arab majorities in the Gulf to oppose the U.S. and support Islamic revolution. To achieve this, he progressively escalated his strikes against the U.S.—the East African embassies, the U.S.S. Cole and finally the World Trade Center and the Pentagon—in an effort to wake the proverbial sleeping giant. It is logical to speculate that bin Laden was counting...
While bin Laden probably did not anticipate the rapid collapse of the Taliban, he has nonetheless achieved partial success. Relations between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. are at their lowest point in decades. During this year’s invasion of Iraq, the Saudis refused to allow us to conduct conspicuous military operations from their soil, and the majority of U.S. forces stationed there have been withdrawn. We have invaded Iraq and deposed a regime that bin Laden hated only slightly less than the United States, but was nonetheless incapable of openly challenging himself. The popular response on the Arab...
Simply regarding bin Laden as a fanatic—albeit a well-organized and violent one—vastly underestimates his intentions, and consequently, his capabilities. The frightening reality is that he is an intelligent, rational geopolitical strategist. As all good geopolitical strategists do, Osama bin Laden has developed a clear endgame. But given the Bush administration’s willingness to alienate allies and Arabs through inflammatory rhetoric and unilateral action, I sometimes wonder when Bush will get around to doing the same...