Over the past decades, I have spent a good deal of time focused on Osama bin Laden, thinking about what he said and did, and doing a little writing about him and how U.S. leaders methodically ignored the speeches in which he outlined his plans to and did wage war on America. In many ways, the late Al-Qaeda chief remains a man whom I respect as a worthy enemy, as the Allies spoke of Erwin Rommel during the second great war. In some ways, bin Laden, a Muslim, was a throwback to another era, one when the West’s rules of war – especially for America under the U.S. Constitution—required a formal declaration of war by the vote of a parliament or, in America, the Congress. Indeed, one of the most important securities provided to citizens by the U.S. Constitution was to wrap the president so tightly in constitutional chains so that he could never take the republic to war without a formal declaration by Congress, save in case of invasion or imminent attack.
In August, 1996, Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States, giving a long, detailed, and largely truthful analysis – from and al-Qaeda’s perspective, that of many millions of Sunni Islamists, and that of many American non-interventionists – of U.S. actions in the Middle East and the Muslim Word generally, and the motivation they provided – alongside commonsense and Allah’s guidance on self-defense – for war against the United States. For the next five years, the Clinton and Bush II administrations either ignored or ridiculed the idea that one heavily bearded man and his Islamist insurgent group could harm the United States. Both also uniformly chose to do nothing when repeated opportunities to kill or capture bin Laden were provided to them by the CIA and its foreign partners. On this, I can claim some expertise as I led those efforts from 1995-1999. Moreover, no politician or spokesman from either administration – nor anyone in Congress — took time to explain the nature and basis of the threat to the American people. Al-Qaeda’s attack occurred on 11 September 2001. The Bush II administration pretended to be surprised by the attack and the mainstream media and the 9/11 Commission followed the administration’s studied deceit in lockstep. There is still a murkiness about what exactly went on before 9/11, but what is refutably known is that both the Clinton and Bush II administrations had ample and detailed warning about a coming attack and first-rate targeting opportunities, none of which were exploited. In that light, it also seems that the administrations got the war they wanted, one that would give them a huge step forward toward their ultimate goal – the invasion of Iraq.
Suddenly, Sheikh bin Laden has again become the focus of debate in the United States because of a paper he is claimed to have written in November, 2002, which is entitled “To the American People”. Now there are several versions or portions of the 2002 letter now flying about the internet, and there are many sites that carried the original text but have for foolish or cowardly reasons deleted another piece of history. Not confident that I had found the document so many people are agonizing over for unclear reasons, I checked my own files and found a copy of a UBL letter entitled “To the American People” at the top which bin Laden notes that “The subject of my talk to you is the overwhelming control of capital and its effect on the ongoing war between us. I direct my talk specifically to those who support change, especially the youth.” My file copy is undated and today I downloaded a fresh copy from the site of the Director of National Intelligence. (1) There is date-related glitch in the letter’s text that makes it appear to have been written in 2008 vice 2002, but more about that below. Nonetheless, the letter I use in this piece surely and truthfully covers a good deal of important ground, and shows that Osama bin Laden’s perception of where the United States and its society, economy, and future were heading was right on target. At a minimum, if this letter is not the one at the core of the current controversy, it may well add more light and depth to that rather heated discussion.
The crux of the above-mentioned letter lies in its blunt truth-telling about the status of America and its economy and society in 2002 (?), which is so much worse in 2023. Following are six of the points made by bin Laden in the letter I am citing:
–1.) “The tyranny of the control of capital by large companies has harmed your economy, as it has ours, and that was my motivation for this talk. Tens of millions of you are below the poverty line, and millions of you have lost your jobs….”
–2.) “[Y]ou continue to support the oppressive Israelis in the occupation of our [Islam’s] Palestine in response to pressures on your administrations by a Jewish Lobby backed by enormous financial capabilities.”
–3.) “The previous administration was successful in implicating you in these wars against us under the premise that they are necessary for your security or according to the promise that it would be short and would finish in six days or six weeks. Six years has [sic] passed. [Here’s the rub, the war began in 2001 and six years would make the letter’s date 2006, 2007, or even 2008 because he mention’s Obama’s regime in the letter, not 2002], and that administration [Bush’s] is gone without realizing the victory…. If it was the six-day war that started after President Bush, and six years have not been enough to finish it, then wise men should question how long a six-month war would take and whether you are able to fund a war that requires a large amount of money that weakens your economy and your dollar.” (NB: The six-month war lasted 20 years and ended in a humiliating U.S. military defeat and a clown-like military evacuation)
–4.) “The course of the policies of the present administration [Obama’s?] in several areas clearly reveals that whoever enters the White House, even with good intentions to safeguard the peoples’ interest, is no more than a train operator. His only task is to keep the train on the tracks that are laid down by the lobbyists in New York and Washington to serve their interests first, even if it is counter to your security and economy. Any president who tries to move the train from the lobbyist’s tracks to a track for the American peoples’ interests will confront very strong opposition and pressures from the lobbyists.”
–5.) “For the American youth to succeed in this change, they need to relive the history of their ancestors and the conditions in their country more than two centuries ago. They need to understand the similarities during that era and their present situation, especially in their fundamental conditions. The British Parliament sided with corporations, then against the interests of the citizens. You have noticed the Congress’s stand with corporations against the peoples’ interests when they refused to legislate against interference in the elections by corporations. The British military governor in the United States used to have the right to appoint judges and mayors. Similarly, the corruption is deep rooted now in all higher authorities, thus giving authorities over these offices to corporations.”
–6.) “Reading the book by the intellectual Thomas Paine helped your fathers in the revolution against the oppressors. It is useful for you to read it under the current, similar circumstances. You are in need of people like Thomas Paine to publish books pointing out the similarities between the two phases and that will have a similar effect. You also are in need of men with courage and initiative like those of your forefathers at that time when they refused to allow one company to harm the interests of the United States, a company that had a monopoly on tea and its prices. Yet there now are many companies that endanger the United States’ economy, which continues to be vulnerable to collapse and they also formulate the policies of the White House. They threw hundreds of thousands of soldiers against us and have formed an alliance with the Israelis to oppress us and occupy our land; that was the reason for our response on the [September] eleventh.” (2)
With the swirling and angry debate now occurring over demonstrating university-students and non-students who the media and the governing elites claim are being fired up by Bin Laden’s 2002 (?) letter to Americans, it is hard to imagine what why likes of Glenn Beck and Mark Levin are so upset by the truth, and are accompanied by an ADL chief who seems to believe that patriots give a good damn about what he thinks or says. Following are the truthful points as they were outlined in bin Laden’s letter: (a.) the corporations, banks, and foreign and domestic lobbies are calling the shots in the way the U.S. government governs, in making sure the Congress is utterly corrupt, and the endless continuation of unconstitutional interventionist wars; (b.) they insure that we behave as the mindless, automaton-like allies of Israel in endless Jewish-Islam wars in which we have no dog in the fight; (c.) they make sure that pirate-presidents begin wars off their own hook, as the save-its-own-ass Congress builds him into a dictator; and, most important, (d) they have created an educational system that indoctrinates Americans with sexual/gender idiocy, climate nonsense based on fake and money-corrupted science, which provides a mindset that deprecates and even hates the words, actions, and legacies of our founding fathers, Thomas Paine and so many others. These four solid truths spoken by Osama bin Laden in 2002 (?), remain as solidly true but far more damaging then even the Sheik could have imagined when he wrote.
–Endnotes:
–1.) Bin Laden’s “Letter to the American people” can be found, read, and downloaded at https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ubl2016/english/To%20the%20American%20people.pdf
–2.) Bin Laden’s analysis in points 5 and 6 above are correct but understated. They portray a direct threat to the republic’s existence. Since President Truman unconstitutionally took us into the Korean War, all of America’s succeeding wars have not been prefaced by the congressional debate and formal declaration of war required by the Constitution. Most recently the worst-ever U.S. president and his treasonous staffers decided on their own to take the United States into the Ukraine war, as well as to send U.S. forces to help Israel to kill its Muslims foes. America’s military history since Japan’s surrender, in short, amounts to multiple presidential pirates starting wars which most Americans did not want, and then losing each and every one of them. None have been declared by the Congress, instead that toady-filled institution passes a bill called an “Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF)” which unconstitutionally delegates the decision to go to war to whichever over-aged pirate currently occupies the White House. That authorization is meant to do three things: (a) give the president dictatorial powers; (b) allow the Congress to applaud the president if he wins, and damn him to hell if he loses, and, most important, (c) to deny the American people any chance at all to press their elected representatives to vote down, after public debate, a president’s request for a formal declaration of war. The Anglophile, elitist, and power-hungry presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, and their ultra-pro-British minions and partisan bureaucrats, had the devil’s own time in lying, misleading, and oppressing the overwhelming majority of Americans – who were non-interventionists – into each war, though they wanted neither. After a tough nationwide battle, both administrations ultimately got congressional declarations of war for two world wars. In the wake of those two despicable presidential performances, U.S. politicians decided that there must be no more presidential requests for declarations of war, thereby clearing the path – apparently permanently – of troublesome anti-war voters, and starting both limitless presidential wars and the steady flow of kickbacks to the Congress, the federal bureaucracy, and the White House from war-loving lobbies, defense contractors, and now foreign governments. It also has led, brick by brick, to the construction of tyrannical rule in the United States, a project that is now edging toward completion.
