Author: Thomas L. Friedman
Publication: The New York Times
Date: June 26, 2001
Memo From: Osama bin Laden
To: all field operatives
My men: This is a great day! Did
you see what we accomplished last week? We drove the U.S. armed forces
out of three Arab countries by just threatening to hit them. I had some
of our boys discuss an attack against the U.S. over cell phones, the C.I.A.
picked it up, and look what happened: The F.B.I. team in Yemen, which was
investigating our destruction of the U.S.S. Cole in Aden harbor, just packed
up and left - even though the State Department was begging them to stay.
See ya. Then, after we made a few more phone calls, hundreds of U.S. marines
- marines! - who were conducting a joint exercise with the Jordanian Army
cut short their operation, got back on their amphibious vessels and fled
Jordan on Saturday. See ya. Then all the U.S. warships in Bahrain, which
is the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, were so scared of being hit
by us they evacuated Bahrain's harbor and sailed out into the Persian Gulf.
Boys, there is a military term for all this; it's called a "retreat." Allahu
Akbar! God is Great!
This is a superpower? The Americans
turned tail as soon as they picked up a few threats from us. The U.S. press
barely reported it; the White House press didn't even ask the president
about it. But trust me, everyone out here noticed it. It told them many
things: The Americans are afraid of sustaining even one casualty to their
soldiers, they don't trust their own intelligence or weak Arab allies to
protect them, and they have no military answer for our threat.
I love America. The Bush people
want to spend $100 billion on a missile defense shield to deal with a threat
that doesn't yet exist, and they run away from the threat that already
exists. They think we rogues are going to attack them with an intercontinental
ballistic missile with a return address on it. Are they kidding? Am I wearing
a sign that says STUPID on it? We'll hit them the way the Iranians blew
up the U.S. base at Khobar, in Saudi Arabia. We'll use layers of local
operatives, who can't be traced to any country. Look at the indictment
the U.S. courts just passed down for the Khobar bombing. They named 14
people, and they hinted that Iranian agents had coordinated them all, but
they had no proof, so they could never pin it on Iran, so they could never
retaliate against Iran.
The people who had the proof were
the Saudis, but they refused to turn it over to the F.B.I. Why? Because
the Saudis never trusted the Americans to retaliate properly. They figured
the U.S. would launch a few cruise missiles at Iran and then run - leaving
the Saudis to face Iran alone. Which reminds me, the Russians have hinted
that if the U.S. builds a missile defense system against Russia's wishes,
the Russians will just sell more missiles to Iraq, Iran or China to overwhelm
the system. The fools at the Bush Pentagon say the Russians would never
do that because the missiles would also threaten them. Oh yeah? The Russians
don't believe in missile shields. They believe in classic deterrence. When
the Chechens blew up a few apartment blocks in Moscow with human missiles,
the Russians blew up Chechnya. Remember when four Russian diplomats were
kidnapped in Beirut in 1985? The Russians retaliated by kidnapping a member
of the kidnappers' group, chopped off one of his body parts and sent it
back in the mail. Presto! The Russians were released. This isn't Norway
out here.
That's why we'd never mess with
the Russians. But the great thing is that Donald Rumsfeld is so obsessed
with getting his missile-shield toy, he's been telling everyone that deterrence
doesn't work anymore against people like us. So they need a missile shield
instead. And Bush just repeats it. I love it, because we are not going
to attack America's strength at home, we are going to attack soft U.S.
targets abroad through shadows. So I hope the Americans invest all their
defense budget in a Star Wars shield that will have no effect on us, but
will divert them from the real means and the real deterrence that could
hurt us.
Yo, Rummy, who needs missiles? We
just drove the F.B.I., the Marines and the U.S. Navy out of the Middle
East with a few threats whispered over Nokia cell phones! So who's the
dummy, Rummy?
God is Great. America is stupid.
Revolution until victory.
