Conjectures About Bin-Laden, Creating "Reality"

In keeping with the theme of November as "conspiracy month"...

People who easily find themselves falling for conspiracy theories often proudly refer to themselves as "skeptics". After all, they ARE skeptical of the prevailing, commonly held take on whatever it is that they think is being manipulated behind-the-scenes by others. But a true skeptic takes in all of the available facts, not just those which affirm his/her biases. So, in writing here about Osama Bin-Laden, I must make a disclaimer: I fit NEITHER definition of a skeptic, at least for the purpose of this article. Because (if you can stand it, here it goes)....I don't know for sure what's really going on, but that's not going to stop me for speculating.

For many Americans, the name Osama Bin-Laden has the same level of infamy, if not worse, as Adolf Hitler. And to the extent that I think that ALL mass murderers are evil villains, I agree with that viewpoint. But back in the 1980s, this sun-of-a-gun was an allied guerrilla warrior in our proxy war in Afghanistan against the then-occupying force of the Soviet Union. Our popular culture was full of praise and support for Afghanistan's "freedom fighters" (see Rambo III or the James Bond flick The Living Daylights). Bin-Laden was right in the middle of this and was a brave fighter. And some of our money and supplies (and intelligence) may have gone to him (this is where I have a big "I don't know" feeling). And why not? He was our ally. But "ally" does not necessarily equate to "friend", although it could have had we followed through with support after the Soviets withdrew. While our main concern, the Soviet Union, was on Afghan soil, we were all for the people of Afghanistan. The moment they left, we quickly went back to virtually ignoring the area. So Osama Bin-Laden, with his bravado and his wealth, looked around him and determined that America's actions regarding Muslim nations were ultimately only directed at promoting its own interests. To him, the U.S. was like any other foreign occupying power. Any American military presence on any Muslim-populated territory was, to Bin-Laden, just as illegitimate and warlike as what the Soviets had done in Afghanistan. And thus, since the early 1990s, Bin-Laden and his organization Al-Qaeda have been at war against the U.S.,its western allies, and those Muslim nations supporting American military presence on their soil.

But why haven't we captured or killed Bin-Laden more than eight years after the 9/11 attack that he authorized? He is believed to be in Pakistan somewhere (if still alive, that is). Or possibly southern Afghanistan. But I find it (and here is where my skepticism may be interpreted in different ways) difficult to believe, in such a relatively small area to search, and with Pakistan being our political and military ally, that we haven't been able to pinpoint his location and "get" to him. And now I wonder (I tend to do this on this blog, for better or for worse)...

Suppose that, on some intelligence level, the U.S. has always maintained some contact with Bin-Laden. And after 9/11, suppose further that they got an ultimatum through to him: keep it off American soil, or YOU will be "soil". Does that sound so far-fetched? Well, consider this: It fits with the reality we're experiencing nowadays. Does it seem to you that Osama Bin-Laden is going to be caught anytime in the near future? How about the middle future? How about...ever? Remember our impressive intelligence and military performance in late 2001 that drove the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan (but obviously not out of existence)? And once that goal was accomplished, how our emphasis there petered, even though Bin-Laden was still free at large? And how instead, President George W. Bush resurrected an old bogeyman in Saddam Hussein for everyone to hiss at? Could that have been done, at least partially, in order to distract public attention from the failure to locate the head terrorist? And if this all is true, then could it be that we made a secret deal with Bin-Laden after 9/11? And finally, am I ever going to write anything else without making it a question?

To make a deal with the individual responsible for a terrorist attack that caused nearly three thousand American civilian deaths would have been political suicide for Bush. But if he could be reasonably sure that Bin-Laden would "play along" in the future, a deal could well have been justified as being in our national security interests.

Not that any of this really happened, mind you. I just don't know. But I'm just having some problems fitting the facts together. No domestic Al-Qaeda attacks since 9/11. Bin-Laden never caught. We're still in Afghanistan, but we're focusing on fighting the Taliban, not Al-Qaeda. The sudden deliberate diversion of national attention away from Afghanistan and Bin-Laden toward Iraq in 2002. Hmmmmm....

Can you see from all this how easy it is for people to construct a "reality" solely from the circumstances that frame it? No, I honestly don't think that Bush made a deal with Bin-Laden. I also don't believe that Paul McCartney died in a 1966 car crash or that the six Apollo moon landings from 1969 to 1972 were elaborate hoaxes. But those notions also came about by people inserting theories to account for circumstances that indicated their veracity.

And now we come to those making outlandish claims about our current president. Obama wasn't born in the U.S., he's setting up a network of concentration camps to deal with future dissidents, he is turning America socialist/communist, he wants to kill old people, and so on. Each "theory" is presented by revealing "facts" pointing inexorably to the horrible conclusion. But I hold that, with a little creativity, one could pretty much manipulate circumstantial facts to create any kind of underlying "reality" that one liked.

Recently we have seen in the news the big story about the arrested Afghans who were apparently part of a terrorist plot to bomb places in the United States. But since we caught them, this information wouldn't go into the "circumstances" supporting or refuting the "deal with Bin-Laden" assertion. So that assertion keeps its life. That's quite intellectually dishonest, but it is regrettably how a lot of people think things out!