I understand that it’s conventional wisdom that osama Bin Laden is a barbaric, bloodthirty madman, a raving radical islamic terrorist.
Of course … that’s what we’ve been told since day one at Ground Zero. He’s THE demon.
Well, when you read the al-Jazeera translation f his videotaped message, it seems remarkably level-headed … the other side’s perspective in a fight that ‘s been going on for a long time.
Here’s some of Xymphora’s analysis. The rest is here.
Bin Laden, supposedly a madman, makes the completely sane offer to the American people that he will stop threatening America if America stops threatening the security of the people living in the Middle East. This is a deal, in some form or other, that Americans are eventually going to have to accept, and the sooner the acceptance the fewer the deaths of both Americans and others.
1. Bin Laden has never been unclear about what makes him angry about the United States, and in this speech he emphasizes the importance of the completely one-sided American support for Israeli state terrorism against the Palestinian people (see also Juan Cole on this subject). If Americans really wanted to do something about terrorism other than strip-searching grandmothers in airports in places like Omaha, a reevaluation of the American support for Israel would be the best place to start.
2. Predictably, and reflecting the fact that the war on terror is really a propaganda war, the reporting on bin Laden’s speech completely missed the points he was carefully trying to make. MEMRI was caught red-handed misstating bin Laden’s words (only read MEMRI to find out what Zionists want you to think, and never read it thinking you will find truth), and this misstatement was picked up by the usual suspects to use as fodder for the Bush election campaign. Overall, coverage completely ignored the deep and justified criticisms of American politics and foreign policy leveled by bin Laden.
3. Americans should think carefully about the common sense in bin Laden’s speech. All Americans have to do to lose the fear and massive expense caused by terrorism is stop abusing the people which bin Laden claims to represent. Is that all that bad a deal?
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