getting us to pass the Patriot Act, invade some countries and start ripping ourselves apart.
This assessment of al Qaeda’s goals I have only ever heard from Western propaganda and the popular consciousness, not any serious attempt to analyse them. While bin Laden’s statements could be lies (more relevant than whether they’re propaganda, which can be true), I think it makes more sense to take his word for his own motivations than what amounts to nothing more than the popular Western view of his motivations, filtered through years of our own media. Of course there may be some serious analysis of his goals somewhere I haven’t read - feel free to point me at it. It should come along with some reason not to believe his own explanation though.
I’m skeptical that it exists though, because this understanding of his goals essentially denies that he has any goals beyond hurting America: it’s “they hate us because we are free.” But bin Laden laid out perfectly clearly that his hatred of America developed from seeing Muslims killed in attacks which were enabled by American intervention - something which I see no reason to cast doubt on, and as such see no reason to doubt his explanation.
How does it not make sense? One way of achieving your aims is making it very costly for the people blocking those aims to continue doing so.
No people on Earth would just go “oh welp, guess we better go home now.”
Conflicts often end in a negotiated peace where neither side has been conclusively defeated, often indeed amounting to “welp, we’d better go home now.” The cost to the US military in Vietnam turned public opinion against the war until it became politically unsustainable.
More broadly, this attitude inevitably leads to post-hoc cynicism, where you look at someone who failed to achieve their stated goals, conclude in hindsight that they made no sense and that they therefore couldn’t ever possibly have believed sincerely in them.
If it really made zero sense, it would make zero sense to use as propaganda. The fact that it makes enough sense that you believe bin Laden even used it to convince others means you accept that people could believe it. It’s not unreasonable to think that bin Laden was smarter than the people following him, but you haven’t done the work to show he couldn’t believe it.
Propaganda is a quantity game, it can make anywhere from no sense to complete sense, because different messages will be received differently by different people.
The Sept 11th attack was not a piece of some greater war. It was a declaration to an unsuspecting people, very few of us had any expectation that something like that would happen. I can understand when the Japanese made the mistake in 1941, but its much less understandable now. It’s certainly no Vietnam, which didn’t end until we had lost large numbers for many years. Comparing that to an expectation that a surprise attack on our civilians would have similar effects is simply ridiculous.
America is a box of hornets. It was still, and got kicked. No other possibility was even remotely likely to anybody that knows anything about us. He couldn’t have been that totally and completely ignorant.
To the contrary, it is far more likely he was an intelligent adversary that researched and understood his opponents, and struck effectively. I simply find that far more plausible than him being a fool that wanted a quicker way to get him and his organization to heaven, and otherwise failed miserably.
So, the only reason you have for not believing bin Laden’s stated goals is that, you assert, it was too obviously impossible to achieve them.
You haven’t presented any reason he instead must have wanted to cause the USA to sacrifice domestic freedoms as a motivation. What about all other possible motivations? Why that one? It seems like it doesn’t do bin Laden any good for that to happen. Instead it seems like it’s how an American, unable to understand the world through any lens except an American one, might decide bin Laden’s motivations must be viewed.
I have at no time asserted it was impossible to drive the US from the Middle East. To the contrary, sowing domestic strife and global overreaction was an excellent first step towards accomplishing that in the long run.
All I’m granting him is an assumption of rationality and long term thinking. I’m not claiming any truth or facts or anything, I cannot read a dead man’s mind. But I can look at what happened and draw conclusions with the aid of hindsight, and strongly prefer that over simply trusting his word.
Are you unable to see how we have harmed ourselves since then? How about how Israel is harming themselves right now?
This assessment of al Qaeda’s goals I have only ever heard from Western propaganda and the popular consciousness, not any serious attempt to analyse them. While bin Laden’s statements could be lies (more relevant than whether they’re propaganda, which can be true), I think it makes more sense to take his word for his own motivations than what amounts to nothing more than the popular Western view of his motivations, filtered through years of our own media. Of course there may be some serious analysis of his goals somewhere I haven’t read - feel free to point me at it. It should come along with some reason not to believe his own explanation though.
I’m skeptical that it exists though, because this understanding of his goals essentially denies that he has any goals beyond hurting America: it’s “they hate us because we are free.” But bin Laden laid out perfectly clearly that his hatred of America developed from seeing Muslims killed in attacks which were enabled by American intervention - something which I see no reason to cast doubt on, and as such see no reason to doubt his explanation.
It makes zero sense though. No people on Earth would just go “oh welp, guess we better go home now.”
Do we seem hesitant to kill people to you?
How does it not make sense? One way of achieving your aims is making it very costly for the people blocking those aims to continue doing so.
Conflicts often end in a negotiated peace where neither side has been conclusively defeated, often indeed amounting to “welp, we’d better go home now.” The cost to the US military in Vietnam turned public opinion against the war until it became politically unsustainable.
More broadly, this attitude inevitably leads to post-hoc cynicism, where you look at someone who failed to achieve their stated goals, conclude in hindsight that they made no sense and that they therefore couldn’t ever possibly have believed sincerely in them.
If it really made zero sense, it would make zero sense to use as propaganda. The fact that it makes enough sense that you believe bin Laden even used it to convince others means you accept that people could believe it. It’s not unreasonable to think that bin Laden was smarter than the people following him, but you haven’t done the work to show he couldn’t believe it.
Propaganda is a quantity game, it can make anywhere from no sense to complete sense, because different messages will be received differently by different people.
The Sept 11th attack was not a piece of some greater war. It was a declaration to an unsuspecting people, very few of us had any expectation that something like that would happen. I can understand when the Japanese made the mistake in 1941, but its much less understandable now. It’s certainly no Vietnam, which didn’t end until we had lost large numbers for many years. Comparing that to an expectation that a surprise attack on our civilians would have similar effects is simply ridiculous.
America is a box of hornets. It was still, and got kicked. No other possibility was even remotely likely to anybody that knows anything about us. He couldn’t have been that totally and completely ignorant.
To the contrary, it is far more likely he was an intelligent adversary that researched and understood his opponents, and struck effectively. I simply find that far more plausible than him being a fool that wanted a quicker way to get him and his organization to heaven, and otherwise failed miserably.
edit for some sloppy wording
So, the only reason you have for not believing bin Laden’s stated goals is that, you assert, it was too obviously impossible to achieve them.
You haven’t presented any reason he instead must have wanted to cause the USA to sacrifice domestic freedoms as a motivation. What about all other possible motivations? Why that one? It seems like it doesn’t do bin Laden any good for that to happen. Instead it seems like it’s how an American, unable to understand the world through any lens except an American one, might decide bin Laden’s motivations must be viewed.
I have at no time asserted it was impossible to drive the US from the Middle East. To the contrary, sowing domestic strife and global overreaction was an excellent first step towards accomplishing that in the long run.
All I’m granting him is an assumption of rationality and long term thinking. I’m not claiming any truth or facts or anything, I cannot read a dead man’s mind. But I can look at what happened and draw conclusions with the aid of hindsight, and strongly prefer that over simply trusting his word.
Are you unable to see how we have harmed ourselves since then? How about how Israel is harming themselves right now?