Editor’s Note: In November 2023, Osama Bin Laden’s November 2002 letter to America went viral, and was removed from The Guardian Archive. We received an anonymous submission from “Comrade Leila’s Whitest Stan” about it, which we are happy to publish here.
Dear Youth of America,
So, you’ve read Bin Laden’s letter and your mind is blown. How could such an obviously evil man have a somewhat correct analysis of the Palestinian conflict? I’m very sorry to have to blow your mind further. Osama Bin Laden isn’t really the anti-imperialist fighter he seems to be in that letter.
Osama Bin Laden was born into the family of a billionaire construction magnate with close ties to the Saudi royal family. He first gained recognition in the West as a Mujahideen leader in the Afghan-Soviet War, in which he was funded by the CIA in order to foil the USSR. At the tailend of the 80s, guided by his extreme interpretation of Islam, he founded Al Qaeda in order to conduct Jihad against America and its allies. This included operations in Sudan and Somalia. However, operations conducted by his Mujahideen in Bosnia between 1994-1996 draw into question whether Bin Laden was ever truly free of his handlers in Washington, or always serving as their useful idiot.
Bin Laden gained further notoriety in the West for allegedly financing the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, though he denied involvement. Eventually he would gain international infamy as the architect behind the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, though he remained ambiguous about his involvement for years afterward. Ultimately, by allowing the United States to create a terrorist mastermind mythos around him, Bin Laden was helping the ruling class to obscure an important detail about 9/11 — that everyone, from the CIA and FBI, to the zionist intelligence agency Mossad, to the Saudi royal family, was in on the plot, and could have prevented the attacks. If they’d wanted to. But why didn’t they want to?
Saudi Arabia’s monarchy has been America’s second most solid ally in West Asia, surpassed only by the zionist occupation of Palestine, commonly referred to as “Israel”. These countries serve as the frontline for the U.S. Empire’s regional imperialist interests — they do America’s bidding, and are granted a degree of autonomy and a share of the spoils. They aren’t the only two regional pawns, however. The United States originally helped Saddam Hussein come to power in Iraq, but he proved to be an unreliable ally whose nationalism exceeded his loyalty to the Empire. Hussein disobeyed his overlords and they overthrew him. They garnered popular support to achieve this through now infamous lies such as Colin Powell’s assertion that Hussein “possessed weapons of mass destruction” and the Nayirah Testimony — in which Iraqi soldiers were accused of dumping premature babies out of incubators. Like Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden was a comprador who disobeyed and invoked the metropole’s ire. In Bin Laden’s case, his mistake was calling for the destruction of Israel and the overthrow of the Saudi royal family, who he accused of straying from Islam. Allowing 9/11 to occur gave the U.S. Empire a necessary excuse to solidify its regional control, and dispose of an asset who had outlived his use.
Nobody went after the Saudi royal family for their role in 9/11 because they continued to obey America in every way. They normalized relations with the zionist occupation and continue to stoke the flames of the Wahhabi Islamic conservative movement. This strain of Islam is despised by millions of Muslims around the world because it’s insanely hateful to Muslim people who don’t follow its extreme interpretation of the religion. It’s similar to how the Christian fundamentalist movement hates any American Christian who doesn’t follow their interpretation of Christianity. It’s convenient for the U.S. to encourage Wahhabism abroad so they can stoke the fires of Islamophobia and fear of Sharia Law at home.
But what does this have to do with Palestine? Bin Laden’s letter talks about large “Jewish capital” taking control of the American state apparatus, and using it to attack Palestine.. This is a convenient lie for the large capital interests that actually control America (90% identify as Christians, for the record). It serves to disguise who is in control, and makes it seem that Israel is in control, when in fact the current president has said multiple times that Israel protects America’s interests in West Asia. Osama Bin Laden was highly educated and could have easily dispelled this myth, which is the most common and misinformed antisemitic myth on the planet, yet it appears in his letter. In fact, it’s clear from other letters and communications in which he distinguishes between Zionism and Judaism, that Bin Laden himself knew it to be untrue. Yet it appears in his letter. Of course this man, who was born into great wealth, could never tell everyday people that the real enemy is people like him and his family, that the wealthiest people of any country, including America, are their real enemies.
This, my friends, is what we call shared class interest or class solidarity. The very wealthiest people pretend to fight one another in public, in front of us, but actually help each other behind closed doors. They teach us to suspect each other and prevent us from achieving the class solidarity that they have. They will always try to turn everyday Muslims and Christians against everyday Jews (including countless anti-zionist Jews), because that’s exactly what serves their interests most. Although Bin Laden’s letter rightly decries the occupation of Palestine, by misidentifying the enemy he still performs a useful role to the bourgeoisie. They try to set us against each other in many other ways — along racial lines or lines of gender and sexuality. All of it serves the purpose of a smokescreen, to prevent us from identifying them as the real enemy.
The ultimate result of 9/11 was the American government stripping its citizens of their constitutional rights through the Patriot Act. It was the pretext to re-invade Iraq and invade Afghanistan. Though 9/11 may seem like an attack on America, it allowed the ruling class to consolidate its interests. Though Bin Laden’s letter seems anti-imperialist, it serves imperialism by misleading the people about who their enemies are.
But having been misled is not an excuse for working class zionists in the West who engage in Islamophobic rhetoric to justify Israel’s occupation and genocide of Palestinians. If Osama Bin Laden’s letter can go viral and be widely read, there’s no reason the work of real anti-imperialists, such as Ghassan Kanafani, Leila Khaled, and George Habash shouldn’t — except if you consider the ruling class wants and encourages you to read Osama Bin Laden instead.
At a certain point, working class zionists are choosing to engage in cruel bigotry and sophistry, despite their class interests. They are no better than working class Christians who join the KKK or working class Muslims who joined ISIS. Like Bin Laden, they’re not fighting the real enemy. To paraphrase other genuine decolonial writers Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon: “Those who try to dehumanize others, in fact forfeit their own humanity. By justifying the murder and maiming of the civilians they oppress, oppressors sign away their own right to liberty.” The fate of such oppressors should be no less than that of Julius Streicher, who was rightfully convicted along with his Nazi friends, even though he never personally killed a Jew in the Holocaust. His hands were the bloodiest of all, because he published an antisemitic magazine which inspired countless others to take up arms against their neighbors.
The wars I’ve mentioned in this letter, from the two Afghan wars, to the two Gulf Wars, to the Bosnian War, murdered and maimed countless civilians in dozens of Global South countries. The survivors of these wars, who live with permanent disabilities, survivor’s guilt and immense grief over their lost loved ones, have for decades hated America. The writer of this piece is just one of millions of Global South citizens who have suffered incalculable losses because of America’s “foreign policy.” We don’t hate America or you because of your “freedom” — this is another lie your government tells you. We hate you because you allow your government to butcher us and destroy our freedoms.
You may feel it’s unfair of us to hate you — after all, you’re not in control of what your government does. But that doesn’t absolve you of your responsibility to the almost 200 other countries that you purposely repress (whether as allies or enemies). We’ve all been told that the American government is the Best Democracy on the planet and it’s this exemplary democracy that justifies forcing the same system on all of us. But America is no democracy — it’s a dictatorship of the ruling class. Everything the ruling class does — from the grandiosity of 9/11 to the viral Bin Laden letter, serves some role in their class interest. It’s designed to keep you from recognizing your class position, and that you don’t live in a democracy.
When you don’t live in a democracy, it’s your responsibility to overthrow the political system which represses your voice and murders everyone else. It’s your responsibility to correct the historical errors of the country you claim as your own, and the first step on this journey is properly identifying who the real allies — and real enemies — are.
In Solidarity,
Comrade Leila’s Whitest Stan
