Osama Bin Laden happy when Bush was elected, his son, Omar, says

[sabrina 1]

In a long interview in Rolling Stone recently, Omar Bin Laden spoke about his life now, his beliefs, his childhood, the time he spent in Afghanistan with his father before 9/11 and his eventual decision not to become, as he says his father had hoped, the leader of Al Queda. Bored as a teenager and cut off from the world at Tora Bora, after studying to become a warrior, he decided to leave and said goodbye to his father for the last time:



Osama's Prodigal Son

My father is a wealthy man," Omar recalls. "He gave me $10,000 in cash. He told me to get a car and go." Omar's eyes well with tears. "If he wanted to keep me, he had to follow my way. If I wanted to keep him, I have to follow his way. I had a broken heart as I drove away. We don't show our feelings. I kissed his hand and said goodbye. This is the last time I saw him."

He remembers his last glimpse of his father: As Osama bin Laden walked away, he wore the same small, mysterious smile he had when he suggested his sons become suicide bombers.

Alone for the first time in his life, Omar took a car to the Pakistan border. A few months later, his father destroyed the World Trade Center, killing thousands. "I never thought the attack would be civilian buildings," Omar says. "I thought it would be a ship, like the USS Cole. My father's dream was to bring the Americans to Afghanistan. He would do the same thing he did to the Russians. I was surprised the Americans took the bait. I so much respected the mentality of President Clinton. He was the one who was smart. When my father attacked his places, he sent a few cruise missiles to my father's training camp. He didn't get my father, but after all the war in Afghanistan, they still don't have my father. They have spent hundreds of billions. Better for America to keep the money for its economy. In Clinton's time, America was very, very smart. Not like a bull that runs after the red scarf.

Then he explains why his father was happy when Bush was elected. Bush unlike Clinton who was smarter, not allowing himself to be pushed into war. The Neocons were pressuring Clinton also. So Bush's election made it a certainty that all these forces would come together to get these wars started, and to plunge the U.S. into debt to keep them going.

I was still in Afghanistan when Bush was elected," he continues. "My father was so happy. This is the kind of president he needs — one who will attack and spend money and break the country. Even Bush's own mother says he is the biggest idiot boy of his family. I am sure my father wanted McCain more than Obama. McCain has the same mentality as Bush. My father would be disappointed because Obama get the position."

"Do you think Obama can win in Afghanistan?"

"Out of what you see," Omar asks, "what do you think?"

According to Omar, Americans are actually lucky that his father has not been captured or killed. "It is going to be worse when my father dies," he says. "The world is going to be very, very nasty then. It will be a disaster."

"Omar always says that without the head, the arms and legs will run wherever," Zaina says.

"I know this for a fact," Omar says. "People were always asking my father to attack more. They would say, 'Sheik, we must do more.' Crazy fucking things. My father has a religious goal. He is controlled by the rules of jihad. He only kills if he thinks there is a need."

"Will there be more attacks?" I ask.

"I don't think so," Omar says. "He doesn't need to. As soon as America went to Afghanistan, his plan worked. He has already won."

Emphasis mine. Edited to include that highlighted paragraph.


He also speaks about the U.S. helping to create Al Queda in the eighties and how his father was then an ally of the U.S.

It's interesting that he has not been arrested as so many others have for simply knowing Bin Laden. He seems to be free to go wherever he wants to.

He appears to be attracted to Western life's pleasures despite his background. He spent time with the reporter frequenting bars and strip clubs in Beirut, saying with a smile 'I'm glad my father doesn't run the world'.

It is after midnight when Osama bin Laden's fourth-born son, Omar, leads me into a nightclub called Les Caves de Boys in the center of Damascus. Marked only by a small neon sign on a side street in an upscale quarter of the city, the basement bar is dark and secluded, enveloped by an air of exclusivity. Omar brushes past the two heavyset Syrian thugs at the door and picks a booth in the back. A dozen or so wealthy Arab men are drinking whiskey and watching Russian strippers put on a show.

He is married to a British woman, a grandmother nearly twice his age. The author believes he is authentic in his rejection of his father's world:

Now 28, Omar is one of 11 sons of Osama bin Laden. But from an early age, Omar stood out from his brothers for his independence. Though Omar does not believe that any of his siblings are still by his father's side, he is the only bin Laden son to publicly disavow his father's violence. In Growing Up bin Laden, co-authored last year with his mother and an American writer named Jean Sasson, Omar not only captures the insanity and cruelty inside his father's world, but also provides an intimate portrait of what it is like to be the son of a sociopath. "In many ways, Omar's story represents how the modern Arab world is thinking through its views of the West," observes Steve Coll, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Bin Ladens and president of the New America Foundation. "They accept the critique provided by Al Qaeda but not its idea of never-ending war. Like Omar, they won't follow Osama onto the battlefield."

I'm surprised there isn't a Fatwa out on him. Or that the CIA never wanted to talk to him. Not really sure what to think, but the Bin Ladens seem to have immunity as far as the U.S. is concerned, compared to other Muslims who had far less knowledge of our supposed #1 enemy in the whole world, yet ended up in Guantanamo, 12 year old kids and elderly shepherds eg, for years.

However, I hope the Rightwingers who thought Bush was so tough and scary to Al Queda finally realize what many more practical people realized a long time ago, that nothing played more into the hands of extremists, than Bush's invasion of a ME country and of Afghanistan.