Another Bin Laden diversion

As Bin Laden conveniently invites all Americans to embrace Islam, thinks Ramzy Baroud*, the real message of 11 September is lost: stop the war

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Osama Bin Laden has once again managed to occupy centre stage and to insist on his relevance to the 11 September story. In his most recent video message, released by Reuters a few days before the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Bin Laden voiced more typically absurd statements, calling on Americans to embrace Islam and so forth.

What is really worth noting in Bin Laden's message, however, is not the message itself, but the underlying factors that can be deduced from it. First, Bin Laden wished to convey that he is alive and well and thus the US military efforts have failed miserably. Second, his reappearance -- a first since October 2004 -- will be analysed endlessly by hundreds of "experts" who will inundate widespread audiences with every possible interpretation: the fact that he looked healthy, that he dyed his beard, that he dressed in Arab attire as opposed to military fatigues with a Kalashnikov; that he read from a paper, and so on. Conspiracy theorists are already up in arms, some questioning whether the character in the video is Bin Laden at all, and others wondering why the tape was promoted by an American terrorist watch group -- SITE Intelligence Group -- even before its release by Reuters, and why it didn't make it directly to various extremist websites first, as is usually the case.

The news and the Internet are already rife with stories that are connected with Bin Laden's re- emergence. A prominent Muslim scholar told AFP that the dyed beard is a "sign of war" according to the Salafi Islamic school to which Bin Laden belongs. Go figure. Others, who wish to highlight the fact that US security efforts have managed to prevent further attacks on American soil, would rather emphasise factors such as Bin Laden not having made any direct threats -- a supposed sign of weakness, they say.

Bin Laden has indeed succeeded in diverting attention from the legacy and meaning of 11 September, 2001 by reducing it to a mere fight between a disgruntled man -- whose whereabouts since the Tora Bora mountain battle remains uncertain -- and a president who dragged his country into a costly, unjust and unpopular war. The reality, however, is starkly different from this caricatured reductionism, which experts on "Islamic terrorism" fail to explain. For those who have shaped their careers on deciphering and decoding Bin Laden, worrying about the bigger picture would hardly be self-serving.

But indeed there is a bigger picture, one that Bin Laden's message and the touting of the importance of that message are unfortunately undermining. While there are lessons that must be gleaned from six years of tragic wars, terror and wanton killing and destruction, these lessons hardly include the need for a wholesale conversion of Americans to Islam (one need not pose as an Islamic scholar to claim that such a call is un-Islamic). For Bin Laden to thus represent existing opposition to Bush's policy is indeed unfortunate and detracts from the important lessons that must be understood.

First, although they repeatedly voice grievances similar to those held by millions of Muslims (and others) around the world, Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda do not speak for or represent mainstream Muslims. Mainstream Islam has historically been grounded on tolerance and moderation, qualities that Bin Laden and his fanatics hardly understand.

Second, extremism in the Muslim world may be on the rise, but this doesn't pertain to Bin Laden and his scarce messages. The obvious fact is that extremism (Muslim or any other) is intrinsically related to areas of conflict and never happens in a vacuum or under stable socioeconomic realities. A study of suicide bombings and foreign occupations, oppression and radical interpretation of religious (or any ideological) texts, massacres, wanton killings and calls for revenge will show that each of these factors is greatly related to the other.

Third, the war on Iraq was a pre- calculated move that dates back to 1992 when Paul Wolfowitz and his neoconservative ilk began pushing for a forceful and hostile US foreign policy. The events of 11 September merely provided the opportunity to justify such a war, even though the perpetrators had nothing to do with Iraq.

Fourth, the combination of fear, public panic and war continue to undermine American democracy. Under the guise of an ill-defined war on terror, Americans have paid an irreversible price -- more Americans have died in Iraq than on 11 September; the numbers of wounded in Iraq top 28,000; Americans are spied on; people with integrity are losing their jobs for taking a moral stance and opposing the Bush administration; respected intellectuals are questioned at airports and community groups of conscientious citizens are monitored as security threats.

Fifth, it is America's genocidal war on Iraq, underreported killing fields in Afghanistan, and blind support for and financing of Israel's brutal occupation of Palestine that largely fuel terrorism and extremism and which are costing the US its so-called battle for "hearts and minds". The obvious truth is that such a battle can never be won when a million Iraqis are killed and four million are made homeless in their own country. No hearts and minds can be captured when Palestinians are slaughtered in Israel's "routine" daily missions in Gaza and the West Bank, or when poor Afghani peasants are blown to bits in random "searches" for Bin Laden.

Indeed, it is in the Bush administration's interest for Bin Laden to disseminate his messages at a time when some important and overdue questions ought to be asked. It isn't Bin Laden and his dyed beard that should be flashing on our screens on this tragic day, but the disgraced faces of those who exploited the tragedy of a stricken nation to inflict tragedies on others.

On the day of 11 September we should remember those who died in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, but also in Kabul, Baghdad and Gaza, so that we can work together in bringing all culprits to account.

* The writer is author of The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle and editor-in-chief of PalestineChronicle.com.