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American Morning

America Strikes Back: In a Taped Statement from Osama Bin Laden, There is Much More Than Usual Tough Talk and Harsh Criticism

Aired October 08, 2001 - 11:20   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: In the taped statement from Osama bin Laden many of you might have seen yesterday, there is much more than his usual tough talk and harsh criticism of the United States.

CNN's Mike Boettcher takes a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIKE BOETTCHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This most recent tape gives a clear indication of the top corporate structure. In the middle, the CEO, Osama bin Laden. At his side, his most trusted adviser, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, and next to him, his military commander, Mohammed Atef. But like any corporate meeting, it begins with remarks from the group's media spokesman, a new face, belonging to a man named Suleiman Abu Ghaith. After his denunciation of the United States and the west, Al-Zawahiri spoke.

AYMAN AL-ZAWAHIRI (through translator): America has committed many crimes against the nation of Muslims, unbearable and nobody could bear. America is the root of criminals.

BOETTCHER: Al-Zawahiri is 50, an Egyptian surgeon involved in radical Islamic politics since his teens. He was jailed for conspiracy after Anwar Sadat's assassination. He first met bin Laden in 1987, when both men fought against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Al-Zawahiri heads Egypt's al-jihad group, which has effectively merged with Al-Qaeda. Like bin Laden, he is a wanted man each for his role in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings. Al-Zawahiri's reputation is a man who influenced bin Laden, and a man who may be the real mastermind behind these and other attacks.

Not speaking, but very important, Mohammed Atef. Like Al- Zawahiri, he's Egyptian, a former policeman, who met bin Laden during the war against the Soviets. Atef is now related to bin Laden by marriage.

PROF. MAGNUS RANSTORP, CNN TERRORISM CONSULTANT: He was really no one, and he was propelled into someone who has tremendous importance in the organization as the head of the military command for the organization. BOETTCHER: All three men were seen on another videotape released just three days before this one. Again, it isn't clear when either tape was shot. What is striking is how stable the inner workings of Al Qaeda are. The same three men can be seen in a photo from 1998 at a press conference just months before the embassy bombing.

RANSTORP: He has special style. That style is not to claim credit after the fact, but to put the West on notice that he is about to do an operation.

BOETTCHER: A reminder, perhaps, that when Osama bin Laden goes public, it is often not just a sign of defiance, but of things to come.

Mike Boettcher, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAHN: In the tape we just saw, Osama bin Laden spoke of fear, intimidation and more attacks against the U.S. To examine bin Laden and his objectives, we turn now to two leading Arab journalists. Hisham Melham is the Washington bureau chief for a leading Lebanese daily newspaper, and Raghida Dhergam is the senior diplomatic correspondent for the Arab newspaper Al Hayat.

Welcome to the two of you. Good to have you here this morning.

Rhagida, I wanted to start with you this morning, and I wanted you to react to what Tom Friedman wrote in "The New York Times" when he posed the following questions.

Quote: "Guess what? The terrorists didn't leave an explanatory note, because their deed was their note: We want to destroy America, starting with its military and its financial centers. Which part of that sentence don't people understand?"

Is that Osama bin Laden's endgame, Rhagida?

RHAGIDA DHERGAM, "AL HAYAT" NEWSPAPER: It may be Osama bin Laden, but it's not the Arab world, or the Islamic world. I have a problem. I have great respect for my friend Thomas Friedman. But I have a problem when there is a suggestion we should deal with terrorism at -- that the cure for terrorism is to have them taste own medicine, that is by terrorism as well. There is a problem there. The agenda of Mr. bin Laden or anyone in the Al Qaeda or others would be really to have a split amongst the United States and Arabs, the United States and Muslims, to really create chaos in the thinking, not only in the operations and reaction. They don't want the solution to the Arab-Israeli problem, because they don't want negotiations. They would like to provoke an attack on Iraq, and that is really -- that would fall right into the agenda for further problems between Arabs and the United States.

ZAHN: All right, but, Rhagida, before you go any further, if airstrikes aren't the answer, what would you do to stop Osama bin Laden? DHERGAM: There has to be definitely -- I'm not saying airstrikes are not the answer, but if they are only the exclusive answer, then absolutely, that will be failure on the long run. There has to be a political component. There has to be strategic thinking, to see where does the United States go next? And there's been a problem with the United States in the way that fix-it approach, with the political and militarily, and then we wash our hands and walk away. The peoples of the region must know that there is an engagement on the long run in a strategic manner, political as well, as the military is only going to be only at, you know, temporary and not full-fledged military operation against Afghanistan and not Iraq next.

ZAHN: OK, Hisham, I want to bring you into the discussion here, and I want you to analyze something that Gerald Sybe (ph) wrote in "The Wall Street Journal," along the line of what Rhagida and I were talking about. He writes -- quote -- "The key to see the ultimate goal of Mr. bin Laden's deadly game. U.S. officials who have studied him closely think his paramount objective is to overthrow the governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and replace them with regimes consistent with his view of militant Islamic governance. That would give him and his followers control over the Islamic world's most holy sites and richest resource -- Saudi Arabia's cities of Mecca and Medina and the kingdom's vast oil fields -- and the Islamic world's only nuclear bomb in Pakistan."

Has Mr. Sybe arrived at the right conclusions here?

HISHAM MELHEM, "AS-SAFIR" NEWSPAPER: Well, probably. I think Osama bin Laden has a very activist, extremist Islamic interpretation of the world and his place in it. I think he sees himself engaged in a life and death struggle with a mighty empire, albeit in his own view, a weak, corrupt, promiscuous empire. He believes that this is the twilight of Western civilization, and his job at this juncture is to give it the final match. That's why his terror is different. This is absolute terror that you've seen in New York and Washington, because it emanates from absolutely conviction on his part, that is engaged in a Manaccan (ph) struggle with this mighty empire that you'd probably think of as the modern day Rome.

In that sense, there are no political objectives per se for this kind of terror. He practices terror for terrorist sake. Unfortunately, he's wrapping himself with legitimate causes. Yesterday, he was talking about the Palestinian cause. He never served the Palestinian cause. He never did anything to help the Palestinian people. His focus was on Afghanistan and on Chechnya. Never cared for the Palestinian cause, never cared for Jerusalem, which was occupied, so this is a man engaged in his own version of a jihad against the corrupt world, and the ultimate objective, I think for him to incite of course the Americans to leave Saudi Arabia, to topple corrupt Arab and/or Muslim regimes, and to wage this war against a weak West.

So that's why there are no political answers per se. I mean, the terror in New York was not for a specific political objective, as we've seen in the secular terror that was practiced in the last few decades in Africa, and the Middle East and in Asia, and in other parts of the world.

In many ways, he's somewhat similar to those anarchists who swept Europe in the 19th century and the early 20th century against the mighty state being the paramount order in the world. And they dispatched their assassins, and they had their own philosophers and their own worldview, but again, you could not reason with these people.

Osama bin Laden believes that the United States is weak. He looks at the defeat of the American Marines in Beirut, the way they withdrew after a determined small group of men kicked them out of Lebanon. He looks at Somalia, where he played the role in kicking out the Americans. He believes that the Americans do not have the stomach for a fight like this. And again, unfortunately, he's exploiting the deep sense of despair, anxiety, economic dislocation, and the lack of legitimacy in most Arab and Muslim societies, and wrapping himself with these legitimate issues and that's really the problem that we are facing. Those of us who criticize U.S. policies in the Arab world and the Muslim world are facing what this men, small groups of men, who are exploiting the problems to their own and antagonistic intolerant ends.

ZAHN: Rhagida, I saw you nodding your head in agreement, and I want to make sure it was at the point at which Hisham was talking about Osama bin Laden eventually wanting to take down Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Was that the point where you were nodding in agreement?

DHERGAM: I agree with Hisham on everything he said, and particularly on that point, because, again, the fight of Osama bin Laden is not only against the United States, but correctly, as correctly said, against Saudi Arabia, against Pakistan. He has his own agenda. And I want to make the distinction, clear distinction, between the agenda of the Osama bin Ladens of the world and the dismay or the dissatisfaction or the disenchantment of the majority of the Arab public with American policies. It just cannot be repeated enough, because some people have mixed the two together and said, well, Arab anger and hate toward the United States, and that is not so. The Osama bin Ladens of the world hate the Arabs as well, because their solution on the problem is more emulation (ph). And their idea is that we should have in the Arab world and in the United States and in the Islamic world, the Talibans of a regime.

Now I don't know any sane person who would want a Taliban-type regime in their own countries that would really think this is the right thing to do. Osama bin Laden really has -- his idea is destruct first, destruct anything and everything, and then we'll see how to build, and it's along the lines he would like to be built. It is a very major problem. But not only the problem of the United States exclusively; it is the region's problem as well, and that is why I care so much that the coalition is taking care of tremendously, with tremendous care, and that should be no fear for addressing the political issues, because some will say, no, no, you cannot do that, you will be rewarding terrorism, well, I say, it is to respite it and in spite of the agenda of the Osama bin Ladens of the world that there should be great care given to the solution of the political problems, such as the Palestinian/Israeli problem, such as the need for Arab states to really look within and really self assess and see the need for Democratic processes.

This is long-term thing. But, of course, they have to be military component, I understand that. But it shouldn't be only military. It's a long haul.

ZAHN: Rhagida, I think you just very effectively tried to make a distinction between Osama bin Laden's hate for America and perhaps what other folks who practice Islam think about America.

I want now, Hisham, for you to react to very small part of Mr. Bin Laden's statement that was released yesterday. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OSAMA BIN LADEN (through translator): This is America. God has sent one of attacks -- attacks by God, and it has touched one of its best buildings. And this is America filled with fear from its -- from the north to south, east to west, thank God.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAHN: Hisham, I know Rhagida carefully made the distinction between Osama bin Laden and his followers and what other Muslims think about America.

Do you think Americans truly understand the degree to which they are hated by some in the Muslim world?

MELHEM: That's a problem. I agree with you. They don't have clear understanding of the reasons why many rational people, many people who would like to be friendly to the west, regard their policies within a certain part of the Arab and the Muslim world with great deal of disdain. And they believe that they have been victimized by these policies for a long time to come. They believe that the Americans always engage in double standards. They don't appreciate the suffering of the Palestinians or the Iraqi people. They do support oppressive regimes, autocratic regimes. They don't talk about human rights, only except in those countries that are not friendly to them. They look the other way when friendly regimes engage in torture and political assassination.

People, of course, exaggerate the American role in the Arab and in the Muslim world. People also tend to not do any kind of soul searching as to why we have all these ills that afflict the Arab world and the Muslim world. There is very little by way of self-criticism in the Arab and in Muslim world, and that's why sometimes, even intellectuals don't do their duty in terms of honestly addressing the problems and their own responsibilities as intellectuals, or the responsibilities of the existing regimes or the responsibility of the whole political culture, if you will. And sometimes they find easier to dump all problems and their ills on the United States or on Israel, although American policies are a factor in the miserable conditions that exist in many parts of the Arab and Muslim world. Unqualified support, not only for Israel's existence, but also for Israel's conquering of Arab land. So there's a great deal of ferment, of resentment. There is also those who see globalization, for instance, today, there are those who look at it as another manifestation, or the latest manifestation of an ongoing American hegemonic project. So there is a great deal of exaggeration in that part, but definitely certain American policies in the region are responsible for this sad state of affairs in the Arab and Muslim world.

ZAHN: All right, Hisham and Rhagida, thanks you very much for your time this morning. You just raised the issue of Israel. And I'm not so sure with the president actually talking about the creation of a Palestinian state that some of those people would feel the same way as what you described as the unconditional support of Israel, but we can argue that on another morning.

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