Osama bin Laden provides the West the very countermessages necessary to discredit the leadership’s sense of righteousness and legitimacy and dissuade potential recruits from joining. Following the anger and misery he brought to Africa and the West through his brutal, indiscriminate, purposeless terrorism through 9/11, bin Laden ended up declaring war on the rest of the world, including and especially on Muslims: on Shia in Iraq in 2005, then on Muslims he considered apostates in 2006, then on fellow Sunnis who cooperated with the new Iraqi government in 2007.
Al Qaeda at first afforded noncombatants immunity; today, not only are noncombatants (including Muslims) targeted, but bin Laden’s narrative — that the West is at war with Islam — has been flipped on its head. Al Qaeda is at war with Muslims and the world.
Bin Laden’s strategy in Iraq (emblematic of his strategy worldwide) — to kill people to bring attention to alleged Muslim oppression — ended up killing more Muslims than the coalition or Iraqi government it opposed.
Al Qaeda and other religious insurgents killed 95,000-105,000 innocent Iraqis between March 2003 and the end of 2009, according to the Iraq Body Count 2010, an independent U.S.-U.K. group.
These deaths contrast with the 5,000 civilian deaths caused by coalition forces. Further, more than 4,000 members of al Qaeda traveled to Iraq where they killed themselves or were killed, according to Abu Ayyub al-Masri himself, the former leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.
Bin Laden brought nothing but misery to Muslims worldwide. His terrorism advanced no science, education, religious freedom or economic growth. He brought Muslims no closer to the ‘Golden Age’ of Islam. He killed indiscriminately, branded Muslims as wanton murderers, destroyed resources, and defiled land all in violation of the tenets of Islam.
Had bin Laden acted selflessly, he could have surrendered himself in October 2001 to forestall the American invasion of Afghanistan, which led to thousands of needless deaths and a war that continues to date. Instead, he chose to save himself and allow Afghans to sacrifice themselves in a hopeless defense of his personal safety.
Bin Laden lacked any religious credentials to command Muslims or issue fatwas. He was, in fact, a religious apostate. He was the very religious charlatan he accused many other Muslims of being.
Al Qaeda efforts are consistently futile and ultimately narcissistic and arrogant since they make media celebrities of it senior leaders but do nothing to advance the standards of any other Muslims. Al Qaeda’s focus on violence is a losing strategy. Members of al Qaeda are losers.
While bin Laden claimed to want a worldwide ‘Islamic state’ with ‘Islamic law,’ al Qaeda leaders failed to define any of these concepts and have no idea what to do if they actually succeeded in toppling the regimes they oppose.
Before U.S. forces cleared the city of terrorists, al Qaeda “rulers” in Fallujah required the destruction of music CDs, beheaded rumored secularists and grew beards instead of doing a single useful thing.
Al Qaeda’s sister organization, the Taliban, governed Afghanistan by destroying graves, stoning women and cutting off the hands of thieves. In short, al Qaeda has no idea how to govern.
The West must convince potential recruits that violent extremism is counterproductive for followers of Islam. Bin Laden was intellectually corrupt, hypocritical and strategically incompetent; the 9/11 attacks were utterly counterproductive for al Qaeda. Bin Laden life’s work provides the very counternarratives needed to undermine the group’s appeal.
James Van de Velde, Ph.D., a former political science lecturer at Yale University, U.S. Foreign Service officer and lieutenant commander in U.S. naval intelligence (Reserve), is a counterterrorism expert for the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton in Washington.
