> The groups that carried out the attack on the United States are reminiscent of
> another tradition. They are propagandists of the deed. They imagine that by
> sensational terrorist actions they can exert sufficient pressure to change the
> course of politics and history. It is pressure politics of the sort, which
> deliberately excludes any attempt to mobilize mass support. Someone once
> referred to them as 'liberals with a bomb'. They believe that the spectacle of
> murder and mayhem can effect change and usually they're wrong.
>
> Who were they? How were they recruited? What made them decide to sacrifice
> their own lives and thousands of others? Here the answers are obvious. The
> question is not what Osama Bin Laden thinks of the state of the world. His
> former employers in the CIA are well versed as far as he concerned. The
> question is how he recruits middle-class graduates in Saudi Arabia and Egypt
> to his cause. For it is they and not the illiterate bearded fanatics in
> Afghanistan who carried out these monstrous actions. Here a quick viewing of
> Bin Laden's video messages to his followers in Saudi Arabia and Egypt makes
> his appeal obvious. What he says (and I've seen one of them) is that the Gulf
> War was a crime against the people of Iraq. He and Hitchens agree on that.
> Secondly he denounces the continued occupation of Palestine and Western
> complicity with the suffering of the Palestinians. Hitchens would agree with
> that as well. Thirdly he denounces the corrupt and hypocritical Arab regimes
> and venal political leaders who refuse to re-distribute wealth.
This illustrates my point. The ends of the terrorists were good ("liberal") - the kind of feeling that leads to the murder of adulterers by stoning, for instance, had nothing to do with them. The evidence of one Osama Bin Laden recruitment video makes this "obvious".
Ted