Bin Laden's Hiroshima

by Mas’ood Cajee

Gillette-rejecting Osama Bin Laden knows he can't find sound justification in Islam for suicide, incineration, mass murder, hijacking, and other heinous crimes, but he is not particularly concerned. At first he denies involvement in the brilliant spectacle of death on September 11th, televised live from Tulsa to Timbuktu. Then he puts forth a justification that eerily echoes Harry Truman and references Madeleine Albright, because there is no Qur'anic justification for such terror.

"When people at the ends of the earth, Japan, were killed by their hundreds of thousands, young and old," Bin Laden told the world on the Sunday the bombing of Afghanistan began, "it was not considered a war crime, it is something that has justification. Millions of children in Iraq is something that has justification."

In a broadcast that aired on May 12, 1996, CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl asked Albright: "We have heard that a half a million children have died [in Iraq]. I mean, that's more children than died when–in–in Hiroshima. And–and, you know, is the price worth it?"

"I think this is a very hard choice," Albright replied, "but the price–we think the price is worth it."

For Bin Laden, September 11 was not so much Pearl Harbor as his own personal Hiroshima, justified in his mind using the moral logic of realpolitik, not that of the Prophet Muhammad. The New York Times (October 14, 2001) reports that the CIA caught a cryptic but chilling message last year from a member of al-Qaeda, who boasted that Osama bin Laden was planning to carry out a Hiroshima against America. So he doesn't view September 11 as the opening volley of a war, but as a vengeful, shocking and stunning strike against the enemy in an ongoing war. He knows that Washington, in a fit of bloodlust and blind rage, will not surrender or withdraw. Instead the US government will intensify the problems of the Muslim world, because it is presently incapable of solving them. He calculated that the richest country in the world would take the bait, and bomb the planet’s poorest country. He knows his support grows in the Muslim and Third World with every 2000-pound American bomb dropped on residential neighborhoods of Kabul or Kandahar. His saintly Jesus-like visage and unnerving charisma charms audiences plugged into the Al-Jazeera news channel.

The Bin Laden phenomenon has stirred profound curiosity among Muslims. Moneyed, wretched, secular, and religious Muslims alike have been asking questions coated with mystified admiration.

–Who is this son of an Arab billionaire who has–Robin Hood-style–devoted his life to charity and warfare?

–Why, when others of his background debauch themselves with vixens, vodka, and Vegas, has Bin Laden chosen a path of ostentatious poverty, boundless philanthropy, miswak-chewing, and Kalashnikov-cleaning?

–What is the worse misogyny for the women of Afghanistan: to be subjected to the tribal edicts of the Taliban, or to be killed by the kiloton bombs of the Americans?

–Which is worse: the violence of Bin Laden or the violence of Bush?

Bin Laden knows that lots of naive Muslims will answer his call for jihad, and support him. He knows that lots of not-so-naive Muslims will equally be driven into his camp and cause, when America's war on terrorism degenerates into the mass slaughter of Muslim innocents.

Bin Laden has felt for America's Achilles’ heel, and he believes he has found it. He knows that America spends more on weapons than the rest of the world put together, but cannot defend herself. He knows that Washington will wage a war on terrorism, but not a war on its root causes. He knows that America has over-extended her forces and commitments around the world, but cannot withdraw honorably or easily. He knows that while President Bush calls this the first war of the twenty-first century, America will resort to the tired and bloody military tactics of earlier centuries, complete with complex metal birds dropping bombs. He knows that America has the most sophisticated spying technologies in the history of the universe, but is not omnipotent.

In short, he knows what makes America tick. And, like an old Aikido master, he also knows how to use America's might against itself. While Bin Laden remains indefensible, without honor, and hardly omnipotent, support for his messianic call grows every day with every bomb that America drops on Afghanistan.

Mas’ood Cajee, a writer living in Stockton, California, is a member of FOR’s National Council and a board member of the Muslim Peace Fellowship (www.mpfweb.org).

©2001 Fellowship of Reconciliation