IN HIS MOST RECENT audio taped message, Osama bin Laden succinctly restated his rationale for international terrorism. This is worth understanding for several reasons, not the least of which being that it provides a much-needed refutation to the often-stated argument that al Qaeda and its supporters are driven and strengthened only by the actions of the United States in general and, more narrowly speaking, the Bush administration.

As bin Laden makes clear, his grievances are by no means limited to the U.S.-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan or the now-familiar litany of the Israeli-Palestinian, Chechen, and Kashmiri insurgencies. Indeed, he includes accusations that Western nations were involved in “barring arms from the unarmed people in Bosnia and letting the Serb army to massacre Muslims and spill their blood for years under U.N. cover,” that the United States “sought to reach southern Sudan, recruited an army of southerners, supported them with weapons and funding and directed them to seek separation from Sudan,” and the bizarre charges that “a Zionist-Crusaders war” resulted in “the humiliation of Muslims in Somalia and killing 13,000 Muslims . . . along with torching Muslims’ bodies.”