Osama Bin Laden

Osama Bin Laden, Writing recently in the Washington Post, Brian Michael Jenkins, an adviser to the Rand Corporation of reflection, said 9 / 11 attacks 10 years ago were not a strategic success for al-Qaida. He’s right. Osama bin Laden’s strategy left at the end – but not for the reason that Jenkins thinks.

Jenkins says that Osama bin Laden believes that the U.S. was a paper tiger because he had no stomach for casualties. Kill enough Americans, and the United States would withdraw from the Middle East, leaving the field open for the proposed al-Qaeda to overthrow secular Arab regimes and impose Islamic rule worldwide.

In 1996, bin laden fatwa declaring war on the United States, said Jenkins, said the U.S. flea the region in case of serious attack. In fact, Bin Laden gave the rapid U.S. military withdrawal in Lebanon following the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, and the equally rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces in Somalia in 1993 after 18 U.S. soldiers died in Mogadishu, as examples of the cowardice of America.

Other al-Qaida commanders disagreed, says Jenkins, warning of the attacks of 9 / 11 would anger the United States and “The focus of their anger over the terrorist group and its allies, but bin Laden continued. When the United States did (invading Afghanistan), bin Laden changed the subject, saying that he intended to provoke over the United States in a war that promote all against Islam. ”

Jenkins is very clear that bin Laden saying he never realized the United States would respond with violence when his organization killed thousands of Americans. He would have been dismayed when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and destroyed the training camps. And so, the expert panel concludes that the U.S. does not fall into a trap that bin Laden had set up deliberately so that when it invaded Afghanistan.

Well, that’s a point of view. Here’s another. Bin Laden was well aware that the U.S. would invade Afghanistan in response to the attacks of 9 / 11 and wanted to do it. He believes that the U.S. would then plunged into a protracted guerrilla war in Afghanistan and bloody, a repetition of the war against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1980 in which bin Laden had gone first to fame.

Military commanders are always thinking of re-fighting the last war; the commanders of t*rror*sm are no different. Bin Laden expected a protracted guerrilla war in Afghanistan, U.S. troops killed many Muslims, in fact it would “encourage all of Islam” against the United States.

So why not say in advance? Why did the United States claim they fled screaming to the atrocity in the first place, if you really are expected to invade Afghanistan? For the revolutionaries who resort to t*rror*sm always speak freely about their goals, but never publicly discussed their strategy for achieving them. They cannot, because the strategy is deeply cruel and cynical.

Terrorists tend to be rational political objectives – usually a revolution of some sort. In the case of Bin Laden, who wanted Islamic revolutions throughout the Muslim world, but had been quite successful in fueling popular support for such revolutions. So how could build that support? Well, what is there to attract the United States to invade a Muslim country?

Revolutionary groups often resort to t*rror*sm if they believe that the lack of popular support. Its purpose is to trick your opponent much more powerful (usually a government) to do terrible things that alienate people and drive in his arms. It is the political equivalent of jiu-jitsu.

They are trying to bring horror and death for the population by triggering a crackdown by the government or foreign occupation, in the hope that it will radicalize the people and turn them into supporters of the draft political terrorists. But people who try to manipulate I think it was the oppressors or foreign occupiers, not the terrorists, who pulled the trigger. That’s why Bin Laden lied about his strategy.

Probably not even tell its Taliban hosts in Afghanistan was planning 9 / 11, because they would have welcomed the possibility of being ousted from power and having to fight another guerrilla war for 10 years against the other superpower invading.

Bin Laden’s strategy was not original with him. He had been fighting as a guerrilla and terrorist leader for 15 years at the time of 9 / 11, and such people have always read all the standard texts in their chosen profession. The idea of?? Using the opponent’s force against him absolutely permeates the “how to” books on guerrilla warfare and t*rror*sm, Mao Marighella.

So I dug a trap bin Laden, and the United States fell into it. In that sense, his strategy was successful and the guerrilla war that occurred in Afghanistan did much to change the Arab and Muslim popular opinion against the United States. (The invasion of Iraq did more damage to the reputation of the United States, but that was not really about t*rror*sm at all.)

Ultimately, however, Bin Laden’s strategy is not simply because the project was unacceptable and unbelievable to most Muslims. And the most decisive rejection of his strategy is the fact of oppression old Arab regimes is being toppled, mostly non-violently, by the revolutionaries who want democracy and freedom, not the Islamist government.

Gwynne Dyer is a freelance journalist based in London whose articles are published in 45 countries.

Osama Bin Laden

Osama Bin Laden, After the Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, the White House released a photo of President Barack Obama and his cabinet in the situation room, watching the daring raid unfold.

Hidden from view, standing outside the frame of the now-famous photograph, was a CIA analyst career. In the struggle for the world’s most wanted terrorists, could have been more important. His work for almost a decade was to find the leader of al-Qaida.

The analyst was the first to write last summer that the CIA could be a legitimate advantage in the search for bin Laden. He oversaw the collection of clues that led the agency to a fortified compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. His was one of the most trusted voices telling Obama bin Laden was probably behind those walls.

The CIA was not allowed to speak to reporters. But interviews with intelligence officials and former U.S. reveal a history of quiet persistence and continuity that led to the fight against t*rror*sm the greatest success in the history of the CIA. Almost all the officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media or because they want their names linked to bin laden operation.

The Associated Press has agreed to ask the CIA not to publish your full name and retain certain biographical data that does not become a target for revenge.

He is called John, his middle name. John was one of hundreds of people poured into the Countert*rror*sm Center of the CIA after the Sept. 11 attacks, bringing fresh eyes and energy to fight.
“I always could give the broader implications of all these details accumulate,” said John McLaughlin, who as deputy director of the CIA was regularly informed by John after the 2001 attacks.

Since 2003, when he joined the Centre against t*rror*sm until 2005, John was one of the initiators of the chain’s most successful arrest of t*rror*sm in the fight against t*rror*sm: Abu Zubaydah, Abd al-Nashiri Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Ramzi bin Alshib, Hambali and Faraj al-Libi.

But there was no jackpot that the hunt for bin Laden.

Bin Laden had slipped away from U.S. forces in the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora in 2001; the CIA believed that they had taken refuge in lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. In 2006, the agency Cannonball operation mounted an effort to establish bases in the tribal regions and find Bin Laden. Despite all their money and resources, the CIA could not find the main objective.

By then, the agency was in its third director since September 11, 2001. John had outlived many of their direct supervisors who retired or went to other jobs. The CIA likes to keep his people in one place for long. Become obsolete. They start missing things.

The CIA offered to promote and move elsewhere. John wanted to keep the file bin Laden.

Was reviewed and reconsidered all aspects of the life of Bin Laden. What is life while hiding in Sudan? Who do you surround yourself while living in Kandahar, Afghanistan? What would a hideout of Bin Laden look like today?

The CIA had a list of potential customers, partners and family members who may have access to bin Laden.

“We have to work little by little the list,” a senior intelligence official says John told his team. “He’s there somewhere. We will get there.”

John rose through the ranks of the countert*rror*sm center, but due to its almost unparalleled experience, has always had influence beyond its title. A former chief confessed that he knew exactly what the position of John was.

“I knew he was the man in the room who always listened,” he said.

In 2007, a co-worker that the AP also has agreed not to identify decided to focus on a man known as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwait, a nom de guerre. Other terrorists had identified al-Kuwait as an important courier upper echelon of Al-Qaeda and believed it could help lead to finding bin Laden.

“They had their teeth at this and would not let go,” said John McLaughlin and his team. “This was an obsession.”

It took three years, but in August 2010, al-Kuwait recording appeared on a National Security Agency. The analyst gave women a memorandum of John, “Closing the messenger of Bin Laden”, saying his team believes that al-Kuwaiti was on the outskirts of Islamabad.

As the CIA focused on al-Kuwait, the team of John continually updates the memo with fresh information. The hunt for al-Kuwait was actually searching for Bin Laden and who was not afraid to say so.

CIA Director, Leon Panetta, I wanted to know more. John never overpromised, colleagues recalled, but he was not afraid to say it had a good chance that this could be a great opportunity for the agency.

The CIA monitoring al-Kuwait a walled in Abbottabad. If Bin Laden is hiding there, in a busy suburb, not far from the Pakistan Military Academy, which challenged most of what the agency had taken on his hideout.

However, John said it was not so farfetched. Based on what I knew about the hideouts of Bin Laden before he said it made sense that bin Laden was surrounded only with e-mails and family and not use telephones or the Internet. The CIA knew that al-Qaida had lived in urban areas before.

Panetta a cautious Obama took the information, but there was much work to do.

The government tried to find out everything that was in the compound.

Again and again, John and his team asked who else might be living in that compound. They came with five or six alternatives; Bin Laden was always the best explanation.

John was always optimistic, rating their confidence as much as 80 percent.

But everyone knew the risk that the CIA was taking when he told the President that Bin Laden was in Abbottabad and wrong. “We all knew that if he was not there and was a disaster, would certainly have consequences,” he recalled.

John was one of several CIA officials repeatedly said that Obama and others in the White House. Officials and former officials involved in the discussions said John had a freshness and confidence reassuring.

In April, the president had decided to send the Navy SEALs to assault the compound.

In the Situation Room, the analyst who was barely known outside the intelligence world together took his place alongside the officials of the nation’s maximum security, the names of the home and familiar faces from Washington.

An agonizing 40 minutes after Navy SEALs stormed the compound, the report came back: Bin Laden was dead.

Two days after the death of Bin Laden accompanied John Panetta to the Capitol. The Senate Intelligence Committee wanted a full report on the success of the mission. At a time when the closed session, Panetta turned to the man who fights against t*rror*sm resume included four directors of the CIA.

He started talking on the operation and the years of intelligence that are based on. And as he spoke of the mission that had become his career, calm, collected analyst stopped, and was excited.