So suppose on September 8th 2001 OBL received a divine vision of what the world would look like some 9 1/2 years later if he went through with the attack. Would he do so, or would the revelation of subsequent event change his mind?
Pros:
The attack was a great success which caught the eye of the world, and had serious long lasting consequences for America’s economy and sense of well being.
A strong reaction by the US expanded the divide between Muslims and the west, causing an increase in his brand on Islamic extremism.
Revolutions are threatening a number of secular dictators in the middle east with the possibility that these could be replaced by more theocratic regimes. (I also don’t think he was probably happier with the current situation in Iraq, than he was under Hussein)
He will be remembered as a martyr by his followers, and as the one who gave the infidel on their biggest defeats.
Cons
The most extreme Islamic theocratic government (the Taliban) was overthrown, and a more secular government put in place.
The core al Qaeda organization that existed prior to September 11th has been scattered and its power substantially reduced
He himself is lying at the bottom of the Ocean minus a substantial portion of his cranium.
Overall I think he was such a megalomaniac that he would go ahead with the attack, but I am curious what others think.
It’s an interesting question. I think that if he had gotten a glimpse of the future he might have prepared himself and AQ a bit better, by having them all go to ground faster and prepare better for the ton of bricks about to land on their collective heads. He also might have prepared them a bit better to fight more effectively in the aftermath. And he might have played things better by playing along with the future 9/11 Truthers, so as to add to the confusion.
But would he have still gone ahead with the attack? Yeah…I’m pretty sure he would have, regardless of any revelations from the future.
Bin Laden’s primary goal was getting Western influence out of the Muslim world. Even prior to May 1, it was fairly obvious he had failed. The 9/11 attacks succeeding in the immediate goals of getting the USA bogged down in a war in a Muslim country but the ferocity of the Western response scattered al-Qaida to the point that further attacks of equivalent or greater effect weren’t possible.
If you’d given him a view of the future he wouldn’t have given up, but he doubtlessly would have tried a different approach, perhaps one involving building up to something bigger, or taking the approach of denying responsibility or passing off the blame.
I think he’d go through with it. The attack is one of the key historical events of the last 20 years.
I think as with most true believers, any “cons” that can be listed for the consequences of attacks would be spinned into being “pros.” For example, the Taliban being overthrown really means that the US infidels have been drawn into a trap of a 10 year long war; that his own death is actually a martyrdom and his path to paradise, etc.
It’s an interesting question. Over the yeasr I’ve seen some people argue that in some ways, al Qaeda was doing pretty well until September 11th, and bin Laden threw it away. (Christopher Hitchens said it a few days ago.) I would like to think that’s true. The attacks achieved some of al Qaeda’s aims in that a lot of people were senselessly murdered and the West and the Islamic world were drawn, in some ways, into a sharper conflict. But the attack failed in the biggest aims: the West didn’t retreat from the Middle East, Muslims didn’t rise up and overthrow their governments and set up a new caliphate, nor was bin Laden in charge of a country or a religious faction or anything. The U.S. didn’t pull back after being struck. Not only did those things fail to happen, they weren’t even close.
So does that mean he’d undo it if he could? I strongly doubt it. The guy was a religious fanatic. No matter what happens, and no matter how many times they predict something and the exact opposite happens, fanatics believe their side is going to win in the end. I don’t think bin Laden planned on dying on a compound in Pakistan in 2011 instead of in a palace in Mecca in 2040, but I expect he still thought his side was going to win sooner or later, maybe even within his lifetime. And these guys do go for the martyrdom thing.
He not only expected the US to come down on him like a ton of bricks; he wanted it. It’s hard to decry us as the Great Satan if we’re not actually doing anything.
I don’t think he believed or wanted us to come down on him or his organization as we actually did. If he DID want that, then his desire was for much of AQ’s early command and control and elite leadership types to get wiped out early on, their communications destroyed or disrupted, and their host government (the Taliban) to get hammered and lose control of the country they were operating from. I find it very hard to believe that he WANTED all that to happen, or that he thought it would. Sure, he was a crazy fanatic…but no one is THAT crazy.
It seems more plausible to me that, for whatever reason, he misjudged what the US (and other nations) response would be, and didn’t know the firestorm he’d unleashed. My WAG is that he THOUGHT what would happen is that the US would completely pull in our horns in the ME, or that we’d use our remote weapons capabilities (missiles and air strikes and the like) to hit a few targets (with inevitable civilian deaths and causalities), and leave it at that.
He showed the little guy can hit the US hard. And it will never recover. He’ll be a hero in some of the histories written and that is probably enough validation.
When has the US (my country) ever just rolled over and showed the tender belly? Never! We worked hard to get to where we are, and some extremist nutcase thought he had what it took to make us into some kind of bitch? No, sir! We don’t lie down, we don’t go quietly. we pick ourselves up and get right back to being a country. He should have taken our resolve and our collective will into account before his attack.
Not sure if you’re trolling, but it was the Japanese who bombed Pearl Harbor, and secondly, the Japanese had no idea what kind of Pandora’s Box they opened until after they’d done it. As I said, I’ve never known this country to just quit on something, except Vietnam, which was a fool’s errand anyway.
My understanding is that bin Laden never in a million years expected the 9-11 attack to be anywhere remotely as successful as it was, and that even knowing so, he would have ordered it anyway.
Well, if folks can spin Lenin into a hero, it shouldn’t be hard to spin a mass murderer on a much smaller scale into one. Hell, there are plenty of folks today who see ObL as a hero and his actions as validated and righteous.
Hm…Savastopol. Commisar. You guys should perhaps get together in Minsk over a nice bowl of borscht and some vodka and compare notes sometime. You have a lot in common…
Your basic assumption that Bin Laden was involved in 911, is flawed. He has never been charged or connected to 911. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13664.htm Cheney admitted it several times. He is responsible for 3 or 4 other bombings though,.
Cheney lies in the other direction. This goes against his hopes. He anted to put OBL in the center of the towers, but he could not. He started off implicating him. But eventually had to begrudgingly admit they had nothing.
Yeah, Cheney also said “it’s been pretty well confirmed” that the 9-11 highjackers met with Iraqi intelligence agencies. He later claimed he never said that. Here’s a clip of him saying both things: http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/002152.php
No objective person could deny that Cheney said a bunch of stuff that turned out not be true. Call it a lie or honest mistakes, your choice.
