Osama Bin Laden: Why He Still Matters Michael Scheuer

Osama Bin Laden: Why He Still Matters An address given to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council On February, 24 2011 by Michael Scheuer

Michael Scheuer Former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit

Good evening everyone and thank you for having me. I guess the one bright spot – I think a very bright spot in a rather dark world – is that spring training has started, and we’re of course headed toward a Yankee victory in October. I had a hunch I shouldn’t wear my Yankee tie tonight so I left it in the hotel room. Again, I’m really happy to be here and I’m delighted to have a podium. I was in Seattle two nights ago at a place called the Town Hall. We had a very nice crowd and they told me just before they introduced me that, “Oh we don’t use a podium here, you sit on a stool.” And I thought, “Oh God it’ll look like a kind of a demented Bob Dylan on a stool.” So I was very careful. I was aiming toward the stool as I walked up to the stage and I managed to get on the stool okay, but I tripped over the platform as I was getting up and everyone had a laugh. It sort of relaxed the crowd – deeply embarrassing me. I want to talk tonight about Osama bin Laden and more especially about the danger of not taking the measure of an enemy to the United States. And peripherally, I suppose, talk a little bit about the influence a single individual can have on history. To begin tonight, I would ask you to imagine that you are an eminent lawyer preparing to argue a case perhaps before the

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Supreme Court. And also to imagine that because you are confident, experienced, distinguished, and usually successful, you decide to enter the court and present your argument without having troubled yourself to look up, read, and then study all of the written materials pertinent to the case. Indeed so confident are you of prevailing, that you do not even read the materials prepared for your use by your team of legal clerks. Now this scenario is, of course, hard to imagine. A good lawyer, after all, presumably would not enter a courtroom to argue a case without thorough preparation. Likewise, it should be just as hard to imagine that any American President would make the most important decision of his or any presidency – that is the decision to go to war – without first reviewing all available materials – written, graphic, or oral – in order to identify the enemy’s motivation and goals. One would imagine that a President, no less than a lawyer, needs to know his opponent as well as possible. And yet, I would argue that US leaders have been waging a war against Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and their allies, without bothering to study his words in a serious effort to absorb what the US military calls “the commander’s intent.” As a result, come August 2011, Bin Laden, al-Qaeda and their allies will have been waging war on the United States for fifteen years. And they will still be a basically unknown quantity to many senior U.S. policy makers, generals, intelligence officers and even so-called “al-Qaeda experts.” That this is the case is purely the result of sloth, or negligence, or arrogance. Because since he formally declared war on us in 1996, bin Laden has at least in one way followed the model of America’s victorious North Vietnamese enemies: Ho Chi Min and General Giap. Like our North Vietnamese vanquishers, bin Laden has made sure that the U.S. government and people

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have no credible excuse for failing to understand what motivates the war being waged against them. Through numerous statements, speeches, interviews, and sermons, bin Laden has explicitly explained the Islamists grievances, their religious motivation, and their war aims. He has also very helpfully provided us metrics used by al-Qaeda for measuring its progress against the United States and terms for ending the war. Bin Laden’s words, moreover, have been plentiful and are increasingly accessible in English and other Western languages. My own archive, for example, contains about 175 primary source documents numbering well over 800 pages. This is a significant amount of material, and yet the only reasonable claim to make is that I hold only the documents that I have been able to find and probably not all that exist. Given this body of primary sources, it is odd that so few of them have been exploited by Western political leaders, writers and analysts who have spoken on the bin Laden issue, or produced books meant to explain who bin Laden is and what he is up to. To date, works on bin Laden, with a few notable exceptions – especially Peter Bergin’s splendid book The Osama bin Laden I Know, have been based, in the main, on what other individuals have said about bin Laden, and not what he has said, written or done. These other commentators can be divided into two batches. The first tends to be such enemies of bin Laden and al-Qaeda as former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, the imprisoned but now supposedly reformed Egyptian Islamic scholar Dr. Fadl, and a former Islamist and anti-Saudi firebrand named Sheikh Salman al-Ouda who is now employed by the Saudi government as a professor, a talk show host and a website director. The second batch is found among former or current Mujahideen who have fallen out with bin Laden. It is worth noting that the men in this latter

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category broke with bin Laden and criticized him over tactics, timing, targeting, or concern for the survival of the Taliban regime. But they did not become his enemies. They still view him as an important, accomplished, and – most important – an inspirational Islamist leader. They differ with bin Laden over tactics and targets. But their ultimate strategic goals for the war are comparable to bin Laden’s. That is, to drive the United States from the Muslim world, to overthrow the Arab tyrannies that govern the Arab world, and to destroy Israel. While what bin Laden’s enemies and former close associates have said about him is a major resource when analyzing his thought, talents and character, it is not a sufficient base of data on which to develop a well rounded assessment of the man. It is quite simply less than half the story. To accomplish the task of accurate understanding, what others say must be assessed alongside the primary source materials. Yet senior politicians, generals, policy makers, intelligence officers and writers have largely failed to do so. Indeed, they often dismiss these documents and bin Laden’s words as rantings, diatribes and ravings – as if they really emanated from the imaginary madman so often described by U.S. Presidents, British and other European Prime Ministers, and Arab tyrants. It must be said that leading Muslim writers and journalists have paid much closer attention to bin Laden’s words – especially his knowledge and use of Islamic history – and by and large have produced more sophisticated portraits of him. Since 9/11, then, a score of books have been written by Western and Muslim authors about bin Laden and al-Qaeda. In regard to bin Laden, these books have focused on his character, intelligence, leadership talent, public speaking ability, international influence and his modern management style. I believe the best of the books in the United States have been written by Peter Bergen and Steve Coll.

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Among the rest, there are a dozen or so books by Western and non-Muslim authors that have come to be categorized as essential works on bin Laden and al-Qaeda. In my new book I have examined each of these books and noted the number of citations of primary bin Laden documents contained in each author’s footnotes. I’ve also noted where a large number of citations pertain to relatively few documents. I did not, of course, have access to electronic versions of these books. My count is derived from my Luddite method of doing a line-by-line reading of each book’s endnotes, keeping score with a pencil as I went. I do not claim the counts are exact, but they are quite close to the mark and give a clear idea of the degree to which each author exploited primary sources. I will not take the time to go through the entire list, but will cite three of what are widely considered to be the best books about bin Laden and al-Qaeda, to note how many of over 175 primary documents were used. The first is a book by a British journalist, a fine book, called Al-Qaeda, Casting a Shadow of Terror – five citations. Another is Steve Coll’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book Ghost Wars: The Secret History of CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden – two citations. The third by Lawrence Wright: The Looming Tower, al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11— 28 citations, 22 of which refer to four documents. This brief list shows, I believe, that despite the large body of primary documents at hand, few of them have been exploited by Western writers and analysts who have produced books meant to explain bin Laden and assess his intentions. The reason for this failure is not entirely clear to me, but it seems to pivot off the reluctance of some authors and most politicians to accept that in the early 21st century, the Islamic religion can possibly be the driving force and key motivation behind al-Qaeda, bin Laden, and their allies. Indeed, in the West, there seems to be an unshakable presumption that secularism will

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eventually triumph around the world. And that only material gain, class interests, or other non-religious factors can be judged to be real sources of motivation. In this world-view, religion is merely a cover for more measurable political, economic, and social motivations. These same individuals seem even more reluctant to face, or at least to publicly state, the fact that in the eyes of most Muslims, Western policies and actions in the Islamic world are not benign and humanitarian, but antiMuslim and lethal. Finally, many contemporary historians, political scientists and journalists tend to believe that the world is shaped, moved and changed by more or less anonymous social and economic forces, be it globalization, capitalism, Marxism, or now the ubiquitous concept of hope, rather than what in a more realistic and thoughtful age, were called “great men.” That this illogical and indeed indefensible mindset should be so strong and impervious to reality is remarkable, if not perverse. And it is especially striking that, as we mark this month respectively the 279th and 100th birthdays of two truly great and world changing Americans – George Washington and Ronald Reagan – the bulk of the bin Laden scholarship moreover is extraordinarily “presentist.” When

Western

authors

encounter

thinking

or

mores

they

consider

anachronistic in the modern world, they default to asserting that ideas running counter to the tenants of secularism, multiculturalism, globalization and diversity can only possibly be held by limited numbers of medieval, violence prone, pseudo-Islamic thugs. The predominantly secular authors, for example, hate the absence of women’s rights in much of the Muslim worldand so Islamists are always cruel arch-misogynists.

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The writers hate the motivational power of Islam across the Muslim world. The power that indeed advises that violence can be needed to defend the faith, and so Islamists are described as the “distorters” of their religion. Most of all, the writers fear any “threat to progress,” and so – notwithstanding their heart-on-the-sleeve prose – they prefer to combat the Islamist with such things as maintaining a status quo, featuring the West’s defense of Arab tyrannies. Note the creeping sense of fear and worry among Western governments and media as the so-called “people power” rebellions they have cheerlead in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain take on a more authoritarian and Islamic cast. They prefer efforts to impose secular democracy on Muslims to neuter the Koran and the sayings and traditions of the Prophet; the Sunna, and thereby negate Islam’s overwhelmingly martial doctrine of jihad. And they insist on claiming that spreading Islamist violence is due to such bizarre and clearly wrong factors as nihilism, the lack of gender mixing, illiteracy and the supposed ability of one man to hijack the Koran from the remaining 1.3 billion of his co-religionists. A close reading of bin Laden’s words would unquestionably offend the presentist’s optimistic view of a secular world triumphing over superstitious religion. And so they have ignored the appeal of these words to tens and even hundreds of millions of Muslims, much to the detriment of Western security, economic vitality, and prospects for peace. Because many of the essential bin Laden-related books lack a thorough assessment of these documents, it is worth looking at a few of the concepts that are now accepted in the United States and the West as common wisdom about bin Laden and al-Qaeda . These pieces of common wisdom tend to support an optimistic view of America’s battle with al-Qaeda and its allies. But most of this common wisdom, I have found, withers to inaccuracy after assessing the primary documents.

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Let me go over several of these pieces of common wisdom. First, and I think we’ve heard this to the point of nausea, “Americans are hated and attacked by Islamist militants for their freedom and their lifestyle.” In more than 800 pages of primary documents there is no focus whatsoever on how Americans live and think. The focus is squarely on what the U.S. government does in the Muslim world. To be sure, bin Laden makes it clear that no Muslim state run by Islamists would look like Canada. But neither does he rage against primaries in Iowa, women in the workplace, or after work pitchers of Sam Adams. Knowing, I think conclusively, that almost no Muslim would risk his life to end these practices. This fact is perhaps the most important takeaway for ordinary Americans from bin Laden’s papers. Because it both lays bare how consistently they have been lied to by the last three Presidents, and explains why they do not understand that the enemy their nation is fighting is motivated by the impact of Washington’s foreign policy in the Muslim world. And I use the word “lie” deliberately, because the data needed to expose the lie is so easily accessible, that the U.S. bi-partisan political leadership, so many of whom were educated in the Ivy League, have no ground whatsoever for claiming ignorance. Their knowingly false description of the motivation of America’s Islamist enemies may be politically expedient, but it most certainly is a lie that will ultimately lead to spiraling defense costs domestic violence, severely curtailed civil liberties and an endless war with Islam. Second, “bin Laden’s mind was shaped by the most radical and dangerous Islamic theorists, especially an Egyptian named Sayyid Qutb. Qutb was a man who defined Jihad as a Hobbesian war of All against All, and is seen in the West as the principle shaper of bin Laden’s thought and actions. Larry Wright’s book The Looming Tower devotes the first very long chapter to the supposed influence of this man on bin Laden. But in the corpus of bin Laden’s

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work, there is not a single quotation from Qutb’s work. Nor does bin Laden ever mention his name. That bin Laden accepts some of what this man said is clear. Bin Laden is a solophist- an austere form of Sunni Islam that focuses almost entirely on the Koran and the Sunna, which is the verified collection of the Prophet Mohammed’s sayings for inspiration and guidance. It is perhaps useful for Americans to think of solophists as somewhat similar to those of their countrymen who believe that the Federal government should govern strictly according to “the original intent of the founding fathers.” As long of the radical Qutb does not stray from this view of the Koran and the Sunna, bin Laden concurs with him. But this is really no more than saying that the Koran and the Sunna are central to bin Laden and most Muslims. When Qutb and others diverge from these sources, bin Laden clearly has no use for their recommendations, and does not deign to even refer to him. The idea that a direct line can be drawn from Qutb’s often heretical interpretation of Islam and bin Laden’s traditional solophism simply cannot be substantiated. By studying and analyzing the most radical of 20th century theorists of jihad, we learn much about the radicalization of the radicalizing milieu in which bin Laden’s generation was reared – but almost nothing about the mature bin Laden’s thought and motivation. One of the reasons we do not understand the breadth of appeal of bin Laden’s words, is because we seek sources of his religious thought beyond the Koran and the Sunna, which are deeply beloved and immediately recognized among Muslims from Malaysia to Morocco to Montreal. Third: “Bin Laden is not a very smart fellow, and the Egyptian Ayman alZawahiri is really the brains behind the organization.” Western politicians and writers often refer to al-Zawahiri, now al-Qaeda’s deputy chief, as Osama bin Laden’s brain. An examination of bin Laden’s work, however, reveals no

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significant impact by the Egyptian on his thought or his rhetoric. Indeed, such an assessment clearly delineates how far bin Laden has drawn alZawahiri away from his original positions and strategy. Before joining bin Laden, for example, al-Zawahiri opposed attacks on the United States, instead championing the idea that the road to Jerusalem runs first through Cairo, which of course has unexpectedly become more likely in the past six weeks. As with Qutb, bin Laden does not quote al-Zawahiri in his statements, but stands with him as long as the Egyptian sticks with the above-noted fundamental documents of Islam. It is worth noting that bin Laden appears to have little use for any self-taught Islamic scholars. Like the English major Qutb, the surgeon Zawahiri, or the Egyptian electrician turned Islamic theorist Muhammad al-Faraj His respect is reserved for those scholars who have received a formal education in religious universities or private study with major scholars. And even these major scholars are not quoted by bin Laden. There is no real need to directly quote them. By simply quoting the Koran and the Sunna, bin Laden is essentially quoting those scholars by putting credit where it belongs, in the mouths of Allah and the prophet Mohammed. The fourth: “Al Qaedaism is outside the acceptable parameters of Islam and champions a heretical form of Islam called Taq-Feerism. Taq-Feerism is where one Muslim takes it upon himself to decide whether another is a good Muslim, and if he decides negatively, that gentleman or woman can be killed and his property taken. In bin Laden’s work there is nothing but a thorough and unequivocal denunciation of Taq-Feeri doctrine. He repeatedly and effectively attacks those who identify him and/or Al Qaeda as a Taq-Feeri group. That said, bin Laden clearly recognizes and respects the massively negative impact on al-Qaeda if the Saudis or other succeed in making the label stick.

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Bin Laden and his lieutenants seldom deign to respond to criticism or accusations from either Western states or Arab tyrannies, but when accused of Taq-Feerism he and al-Zawahiri and other lieutenants are quick to rebut the accusations. Bin Laden clearly and accurately foresees oblivion for his organization and its allies if the Muslim masses come to believe that they are Taq-Feeris. His concern is evident in that he has twice used public statements to apologize to all Muslims for the Taq-Feeri behavior of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda’s late and murderous leader in Iraq, and to assure Muslims that such actions would not occur again, and to publicly and explicitly order al-Qaeda fighters to avoid such behavior. Fifth: “Bin Laden and al-Qaeda are running from rock to rock and cave to cave” – this is President Bush’s favorite – “and so have no central command and control.” To test this claim, let’s again look at the now dead Al Qaeda chief in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. As noted, Zarqawi’s murderous behavior in Iraq is the only potentially fatal strategic threat al-Qaeda has faced since 9/11. Indeed if the U.S. military had not killed Zarqawi Al Qaeda would have found a way to dispose of him, either by promoting him to a position where he could not command fighters, or by killing him themselves. Aside from the substantial but temporary damage al-Zarqawi did to alQaeda’s position in Iraq, and to the group’s Muslim world standing, bin Laden’s

handling

of

what

can

be

called

“the

al-Zarqawi

problem”

demonstrated his management style, which is an indirect style. Avoiding public disputes with lieutenants and allies is always his priority. It also demonstrates the continuing hierarchical nature of al-Qaeda and its ability to command forces outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Bin Laden did not take on al-Zarqawi publicly, but assigned Zawahiri and another senior al-Qaeda leader – a man named Ateea – to bring Zarqawi back on the reservation. Al-Zawahiri did it in a measured but clearly pointed

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manner. He praised and stressed al-Qaeda’s respect for al-Zarqawi’s success in killing Americans and their allies, but told him that he was part of a bigger organization that had an international agenda that was being damaged by his actions, especially televised beheadings and the bombings of mosques and shrines. When al-Zawahiri took no remedial action, Ateea followed with a much

harsher

letter.

It

opens

by

saluting

al-Zarqawi’s

lethal

accomplishments against the United States, but then harshly chastises him for ignoring the fact that he is subordinate to bin Laden and other group leaders, demanding that his actions must complement, not retard, al-Qaeda’s international

goals,

and

pledging

that

he

would

be

removed

from

commanding al-Qaeda in Iraq if he did not quickly fall into line. The content of both letters, as well as al-Qaeda’s ongoing rebound in Iraq, ought to give pause to the authors who have identified al-Qaeda as either a completely

decentralized

organization

now

isolated

from

so-called

independent affiliates, or as a doctrinally Taq-Feeri organization. These authors are largely mistaken, and their mistaken work has skewed the now losing US military’s understanding of its Islamist foes, as well as the doctrine our military has shaped to defeat them. Sixth: Very current today in the media, “al-Qaeda has failed.” After reviewing bin Laden’s words it is irrefutably clear that he has always intended alQaeda’s primary role to be that of inciting and instigating Muslims to drive America from the Muslim world, attack Israel, and overthrow tyrannical police states. And not as a military machine meant to defeat Islam’s enemies by itself or in alliance with a few other groups. Thus the whole concept talked by self-serving Western politicians, that they have made Western populations safer because there has not been another 9/11 attack, reflects not only wishful thinking but a singular ignorance of al-Qaeda’s goals and the expanding power of its media operations.

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At 9/11 for example, al-Qaeda’s main planning, training, and operational platform was in Afghanistan. As the second month of 2011 ends, the group retains part of that platform, has added a viable and growing base in Pakistan and also has such platforms in Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, and North Africa. In addition, al-Qaeda’s example of hurting the United States, and then not only surviving, but growing in numbers and expanding geographically has been an inspiration for continued or increased organizational activity and/or violence by Islamic Mujahideen in the north Caucuses, southern Thailand, across the Far East, in Europe, the Arabian peninsula, Africa, India, and the United States. In short, al-Qaeda not only retains substantial military capabilities for a group of its limited size, but it has developed an outsized media and geographical reach. In terms of inspiration and instigation capabilities, alQaeda is today exactly what bin Laden intended it to be: an unqualified success in inspiring Muslims to wage war across the Muslim world. Today alQaeda probably is about where bin Laden expected it to be, given his clear expectation of a multi-generational struggle. Finally, one dearly beloved of Americans and Westerners because it deals with polling: “Polling in the Muslim world now shows that bin Laden is no longer popular, and al-Qaeda is no longer relevant.” Not surprisingly, many non-Muslim authors place high value on the results of polling by reputable Western firms in the Muslim world. And some of this polling is indeed very valuable. But the poll’s celebrity measuring are personality-based questions such as, “Do you approve of Osama bin Laden?” Or, “Would you want to live under a Bin Laden government?” are virtually worthless. They disguise reality and give hope where there should be little or none. Today’s low positive responses to such questions, for example, would skyrocket tomorrow if al-Qaeda attacked successfully in the United States or

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especially in Israel. The key polling questions are the ones that mesh with what bin Laden identifies as the motivation for jihad and with what he wants to achieve. Questions such as, “What do you think of U.S. foreign policy?” or “Do you want to be governed with a large measure of Islamic law?” and “Do you believe your current government is un-Islamic, has failed, or is oppressive?” These questions illicit the most informing responses. Polling shows virtually unanimous hatred among Muslims around the world for the impact of U.S. foreign policy and for current Muslim governments – and very large majorities favoring a substantial measure of Islamic law in their governance. These results, moreover, are nearly the same among key cohorts: young and old; men and women; militants and moderates. As long as these results remain consistently high for protracted periods in these cohorts – as they have for more than a decade – bin Laden is on the right track for his purposes. Indeed, his refusal to use public words to build his own celebrity, and his use of them instead to focus unrelentingly on al-Qaeda’s war aims and on inciting Muslims is nothing short of genius. As noted, none of this means Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and their allies are ten-foot-tall enemies. Although bin Laden himself is a world-changing individual. Indeed, bin Laden provides haunting contemporary proof that history is made and changed, for better or worse, by individuals and ideas and not by anonymous forces. Indeed, with any kind of a manly Western response, both could have been eliminated at almost any time between bin Laden’s declaration of war in 1996 and mid-1999. That of course did not happen, mostly because of the inferior and timid quality of Western military and political leadership. What a reading of the primary bin Laden documents does suggest, however, is that 15 years into the war bin Laden is waging, the West’s understanding of its Islamist

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enemy’s leader and his goals is at best marginal, because of its own political leaders failure to read what he said, accept that his motivation is what he says it is, and recognize that he intends to do exactly what he said he would do. The reality is troubling, especially because there is no doubt that the U.S., British and other Western intelligence services are providing their elected and civil service superiors with detailed analysis of bin Laden’s words. And that these analyses surely contradict the popular, “They hate us for our freedom,” mantra offered repeatedly by political leaders. Thinking back nearly 90 years, the West last made this kind of deliberate error when it failed to read, but readily scorned and ridiculed, the published words of a highly decorated but then jailed former corporal in the Kaiser’s army. Now as then, it would be wise to follow the timeless guidance of another man who intended and came closest to destroying the United States. The better rule, Robert E. Lee once wrote, is to judge our adversaries from their standpoint, not from our own. And it is always proper to assume that the enemy will do what he says he will do, and what he should do. Thank you very much.

www.lawac.org Speeches are edited for readability and grammar, not content. The views expressed herein are not endorsed by the Council. The Los Angeles World Affairs Council is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that pays neither honoraria nor expenses to its speakers.

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