The New York Times (9/14) published an extensive article by Middle East expert Judith Miller, titled "Bin Laden: Child of Privilege Who Champions Holy War." While it is no secret that Bin Laden was a creature of the U.S. intelligence services, Ms. Miller merely smoothes it over by saying, "…the U.S. had worked ‘alongside’ him to help oust the Russians from Afghanistan…" The U.S. "work" poured in $2 billion!
If anyone is to blame for the terrorist activities of Bin Laden, it’s the CIA.
First, let’s understand why Bin Laden and the U.S. bosses are now enemies. Although it is posed as a "holy war," it is basically over the oil wealth of Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden represents a section of the Saudi ruling class (from which he comes from) who wants full control of the oil, instead of sharing with Exxon-Mobil. The U.S. bosses know if they lose Saudi Arabia, the way they lost Iraq, they won’t have control of the cheapest and biggest oil producers in the world. Without this control. U.S. imperialist supremacy is in serious question.
In 1979, Bin Laden, who inherited a $300 million fortune from his father (accumulated from construction work for the Royal Saudi family), decided to abandon his former life of luxury and dedicate himself to "fight communism." When the Soviet army entered Afghanistan to support a pro-Moscow government there, Bin Laden was recruited by the CIA to become the "financier" of the anti-Soviet "holy war."
In 1986, William Casey, CIA chief under Reagan, approved an old proposal by the Pakistani intelligence services to recruit Islamic fundamentalists worldwide to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. While the Pakistanis did the recruiting, Saudi Arabia provided money and the U.S. gave political support and "funneled more than $2 billion in guns and money…during the 1980s. It was the largest covert action program since World War II (Washington Post, 7/19/92).
Soon, 35,000 fundamentalists came to fight alongside the Afghani holy warriors. Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo III (1988) was based on this CIA vision of the world: then the "good" guys were the Bin Laden "holy warriors" fighting the "evil communist" Soviet empire.
Bin Laden and his followers learned all their tricks from the master terrorists: the CIA. "It was the CIA which taught him how to be bold…It was also the CIA which taught him the tricks of a secret war: how to move money around using ghost companies and off shore fiscal paradises, how to prepare explosives, how to use coded messages to communicate with his agents and avoid detection, how to retreat into a safe base after a big blow to the enemy…"(El Pais, Madrid, 9/14).
Soon after the Soviet Army left Afghanistan and the Soviet Union itself imploded, the U.S. and its Pakistani allies began supporting the most backward of all the holy warriors, the Taleban. The Pakistani intelligence services financed all of this by smuggling opium and heroin from Afghanistan.
In 1991, when the U.S. led an imperialist coalition against Iraq, and U.S. troops were stationed in the Moslem "holy land" of Saudi Arabia, the fundamentalists united against the new "evil empire," their old friends in the U.S. Bin Laden joined forces with other fundamentalist forces like Islamic Jihad of Egypt who had murdered Anwar Sadat, considered a lackey of the U.S. and Israel.
But even while Bin Laden has become the number one bad guy on the U.S. hit list, some of his followers are still serving U.S. bosses. Last April, Secy. of State Colin Powell approved $43 million in "humanitarian" aid for the Taleban.
Furthermore, many of the veterans of the Afghan "holy war" were fighting alongside the U.S.-supported Kosovo-Albanian "freedom fighters" during the 1999 air war against the former Yugoslavia. And more recently, some have fought with the Albanian forces against the government of Macedonia.
Again, when one talks about terrorism, don’t lose sight of the big ones: U.S. imperialism and its CIA. And don’t lose sight of what is behind the holy war between Bin Laden and the U.S. bosses: control of oil profits.
After the 1991 Gulf War, CNN and the U.S. mass media admitted they just parroted whatever the Pentagon reported. They claimed they were "duped" and said "it wouldn’t happen again." During the Balkan Wars, a similar situation occurred. It’s happening again today.
The role of the media is to distort and lie for the bosses. For example, CNN used 10-year-old images of Palestinians celebrating the invasion of Kuwait by the Iraqi army, saying they were Palestinians celebrating the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center.
The media has also helped in the racist misinformation about people of Arab descent. CNN reported that Adnan and Ameer Bukhari were the two pilots who crashed the jets on the Twin Towers. But it was later reported that Ameer had died a year before in a plane crash and Adneer was questioned by the FBI and found innocent.