There were gross miscalculations on both sides. Osama bin Laden thought antiwar sentiment would be much stronger than it turned out to be, and that the U.S. government’s response to 9/11 would be much weaker. The U.S., meanwhile, along with the rest of the West, steadfastly refused to face the ideological wellsprings of the attacks, and allowed those who hold the same world view to settle in large numbers in Europe and North America, with consequences that have yet to be fully seen.
“Osama bin Laden was ‘eager to replicate 9/11,’ plotted further atrocities against US: letters,” by Lee Brown, New York Post, April 25, 2022:
Osama bin Laden had been “very eager to replicate the 9/11 attacks” against the US — and actively plotted to blow up oil tankers, derail trains and use private jets as weapons, according to a trove of seized documents.
The plots were spelled out in more than 500,000 letters and files seized by the Navy SEAL team that executed the mass-murdering al Qaeda leader in 2011, according to Nelly Lahoud, an Islamic scholar who spent years carefully studying the trove.
They show that the terrorist was “very eager to replicate the 9/11 attacks in the United States,” Lahoud, a senior fellow in New America’s International Security program, told “60 Minutes.”
Bin Laden was “mindful” that security had become “very difficult at airports” after his monstrous Sept. 11 attacks — and so told his henchmen to instead consider chartering private jets to attack the US.
Knowing that would be difficult, too, he also spelled out a detailed plan to slaughter American commuters on a train.
He wanted to have around 40 feet of track removed so that a “train could be derailed,” said Lahoud, who first analyzed the documents for West Point’s Combatting Terrorism Center….
The plots were detailed in letters from 2004, according to Lahoun — who said the “diminutive”-sounding terrorist was so scared in hiding after Sept. 11 that he did not communicate with his henchmen for three years.
In 2010, a year before his death, bin Laden plotted to target multiple crude oil tankers and major shipping routes around the Middle East and Africa.
Bin Laden saw “the importance of oil for the industrialized economy” as “similar to blood for human beings,” Lahoud said.
“So, if you cause somebody to bleed excessively, even if you don’t kill him you will at least weaken him,” she said.
“He really wanted to do to the American economy,” she said….
The plans were never carried out, and bin Laden came across as “far from” in control of al Qaeda, Lahoud said, stressing that the letters made clear he was “absolutely not” calling the shots….
This was in part down to a “huge miscalculation” in how bin Laden predicted the US would respond to losing thousands on Sept. 11.
“He thought that the American people would take to the streets, replicate the anti-Vietnam war protests and they would put pressure on their government to withdraw from Muslim majority states,” she said, with the letters showing he expected at most “a limited airstrike.”
The docs also showed that al Qaeda had just $200,000 in its coffers in 2006 and was unable to support its increasingly fractious jihad, the report said….
PMK says
He just waited too long. Bill Clinton saw the country attacked several times.
He treated the 1993 attack on WTC as a criminal matter.
The embassy bombings and the attack on the USS Cole drew only a limited response.
Most attacks occurred overseas and the 1993 attack killed ‘only[‘ six people.
Had 9/11/2000 been the date of the second WTC attack, it’s doubtful Clinton would have reacted like Bush did. After all, he was trying to get Al Gore elected. And of course we couldn’t blame all those ‘innocent’ Muslims for what al Qaeda did.
Naildriver says
‘raze’ Mecca…
Pierre Delecto says
The Crusades would have been a fine idea had contemporary logistics been adequate.
Logistics are no longer the obstacle.
Infidel says
Except that during the Crusades, there was nothing stopping anyone from a scorched earth policy. To pull off what you’re describing, we’d need the ethical standards of the Russian army operating in any of these countries – particularly Pakistan
Naildriver says
Agreed it’ll be likely impossible to pull off a fight now against Islam. But where is this going if not?
‘Ethical standards’ are putty in the hands of politicians on both sides now — shameless propaganda is already rife now, and lies abound already — people as Spencer are already being tarred as right wing white extremists, white supremacists! Traitors are everywhere.
As to the bad, bad Russians … Russians would argue they are fighting Nazi, and argue that state empowered terrorists in the Donbas region need to be stopped, and the thuggish lies and betrayal of a Western block decadence prevented from infecting youth, with Nato, as a gun pointed at them; nukes are thinkable. Polls still show Putin has large support.
SO now we may well let islam win by scorching each other! over a country, the Ukraine, with no national interests to us — talk about scorched earth.
To lose to Islam, killing each other off, is going to be a bad consequence for humanity.
Fairness, sanity, and decency, gone. No hope at all for truth; not just for women and free speech.
It’ll mean centuries of the human race slogging along in the idiocy of Islamic lies established as God’s truth screamed from minarets, where the ‘big brother’ of Mohammed oversees all in officious tedium, making Orwell’s 1984 look like a very real prophesy. The idiocy of an old and cruel dictator like Putin would be better, as at least he’d be dead soon. I guess China and the Pacific Asians will divide the world with the Islamic caliphates.
The cold war with Islam is underway, and i hope some leader rises to the challenge to help identify it as our collective enemy; far beyond squabbles with Russia — and we need Russia to help fight islam.
It’s going to get bloody because Europe has let too many Muslims in already, and any fight will include opponents as France, may be even the EU.
If possible a sooner ‘scorched earth’ War against Islam may be in order and ‘good’.
Is it wise to wait till there is 50/50 equality in power to feel righteous; in nukes, tanks, armies, nations; and hope the likes of another Obama is not in charge?
That’ll be a scorched earth.
gravenimage says
The claim that Russia invaded Ukraine because there are some neo-Nazis there makes no sense at all–there are actually more neo-Nazis in Russia, and Putin in not invading his own country. Besides, Russia also invaded Ukraine in 2014 and seized Crimea, and had invaded Georgia and threatened Poland with Jihadists–they didn’t claim that this had anything to do with neo-Nazis.
And the idea that freedom from the Russian heel is “decadence” is just appalling–do you want to see a return to the Iron Curtain?
As for Islam, most Muslim s support Russia’s unprovoked aggression–including Chechen Jihadists attacking Ukrainians, screaming “Allahu Akbar!”. This should not surprise–Muslims are emboldened over this kind of violence.
They idea that rolling over for aggression somehow means we are in a stronger position re Islam makes no sense at all.
As for Russia fighting Islam, this is not apt to happen. Putin has openly cited Islam as a bulwark against the West, and he has allowed Chechnya to impose Shari’ah law. He has also built the largest Mosque in Europe in Moscow along side Erdogan and Abbas.
And lest you think that this is just Putin, it is not. Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has castigated the West for not taking in unlimited Muslim immigrants as Russia does. He has said that Islam is closer to Christian Orthodoxy than is Catholicism and Protestantism, and has said that “Our common task is to counter demonization of Islam”. All *very* troubling stuff.
And the idea that Europe should continue to import more violent Muslims until they have taken over 50% of the continent is just appalling–that would make the cradle of democracy like Nigeria. Personally I want to see Europe stope heading down this suicidal path.
Naildriver says
I had a feeling my comments would be misinterpreted, if not totally — I had thought I clearly said Russia’s population has a point of view and it is largely supportive of Putin, according to polls I’ve seen. I’ve in no way supported Russia’s invasion. Propaganda and lies work — thats’s across the world. NATO is a threat to the minds of many Russians to this day and NATO’S behavior of accepting barrier countries hasn’t helped, since the Russians think that the West had promised NATO wouldn’t expand toward them. I was also making reference to the left’s need to create an enemy of Russia.
Upon Russia’s capacity to help the West — of course it can; and Russia has had terrible terrorist conflicts with Islam from Beslan to Moscow. There is no great love for Islam among most Russians, your good argument opposing this reality notwithstanding.
It is sad they have fallen for lies — lies as you seem to think I’m giving support; which I’m not! That Putin uses these Muslims to fight the Ukrainians is the height of evil — and may well cause his downfall.
One should see from what I said to mean, I don’t see Putin in charge forever — his health is already said to be in serious condition.
Russia shouldn’t be our enemy though; so, hopefully Russia’s next leader may realize a way to get past these issues with the West– and the West should encourage it; so we do not come to blows that could only enable Islam.
We should try to come to a partnership with Russia against this common enemy Islam; which is impossible if Russia nukes us over our help to the Ukrainians.
Read Buchanan on this topic.
gravenimage says
Bin Laden wanted to replicate 9/11 jihad attacks, didn’t expect magnitude of US response to them
…………..
Glad to hear that there was something right about President Bush’s reaction to 9/11.
Black Sabbath says
Family ties trough Arbusto Energy. That reaction an iceberg in itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbusto_Energy
http://www.mafhoum.com/press2/65Safp.htm
Naildriver says
It is interesting Bush chose to attack both the most Westernized Islamic nation, Iraq, but an Arab country, and the most backward most fanatical, the Taliban of Afghanistan non-Arab Pashtoons. One can see the results of both being very similar in negative consequence to US objectives.
Both campaigns well illustrate the intransigent and persistent prurience of Islam’s effect — Islam is like a testosterone injection upon the resistant male population. Islam was never threatened in either, but given a choice, to either embrace more humane and intelligent practices, or remain barbaric; and as we saw barbaric behavior is the choice of most Muslims –because therein is the men’s entitlement system they so love.
Both invasions showed, particularly with the consequences of the added ‘Arab Spring’ Obama heralded, that Islam cannot be made non-toxic.
Getting it systemically at its geographic center, Mecca is necessary and that ‘whack a mole’ methods only annoy the beast that is Islam. Bush illustrated the need to eradicate Islam entirely instead of his and Obama’s praise and patronizing this vile system, called Islam.
gravenimage says
I never said that I thought anti-terrorism efforts in either Iraq or Afghanistan particularly worked–because hoping to foster democracy and freedom in Muslim-majority societies was never realistic. I just meant that it is good to see that it had *some* positive effect, in bin Laden backing off.
As for the idea that the threat of Islam would end if Mecca was targeted, this does not hold water. The Black Rock in the Ka’aba has been damaged and likely destroyed and replaced several times, yet Islam has not stopped. Muslims revere Mecca, but there is no indication at all that they would all apostatize if that city was nuked.
There is no way to eradicate Islam–but it *can* be isolated, as it was for centuries. There was little threat to the West during that period. We do not need to keep importing violent Muslim invaders as you counsel.
Naildriver says
We disagree upon how military activities shape world history; but there is no question military operations have changed the course of history; and Islam’s progress with the West. It seems most effective when we defeat them.
I can agree that an attack upon Mecca could have the reverse effect of intentions but that’s to assume other things were not accomplished in so doing, such as a persistent educational program to reveal the absurdity of the system that is Islam. Things that have a beginning from twisted minds and repeated lies can indeed be eradicated, Graven; as it is the difference between being sick and healthy. Islam is a disease.
gravenimage says
Naildriver, I *never* said that military activities are not often key to shaping world history; clearly this is so. I just said that there is no indication that destroying the Black Rock would end Islam.
And I certainly agree that Islam should regularly be debunked–although I think this is as much to educate Infidels as to try and change pious Muslims’ minds. They seldom listen to the ‘filthy Infidels’.
Islam is certainly unhealthy. Best reason for not bringing in more ravening, violent Muslims.