Jerry Brito

What does Osama want?

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Christopher Hitchens has an interesting piece in Slate in which he tries to define terrorism. Getting worked up over the semantics of that word is a waste of time, I’ve often thought. We all know what we’re “against” and what the current war is “on.” But Hitchens makes the distinction between people who employ terrorist tactics who can still conceivably be considered “freedom fighters,” and those who he terms nihilists because they “demand the impossible at the point of a gun.” I think that’s a useful distinction, although perhaps not in the definition of the word terrorist.

When I first heard of bin Laden’s new tape, I thought it would turn out to be a fake because in it he demands that America convert to Islam. This sounded very out of character for bin Laden who up to that point only wanted the U.S. to retreat from its Middle Eastern positions–a doable, justified position to have even if his tactics are deplorable.

This new demand however, does set him up as a nihilist. It also gives credence to the “clash of civilizations” types (like Hitchens) and the idea that we are targeted solely or primarily because we are free. I still would like to think that it’s our foreign policy (something we can control) that makes us the target of terrorism, and not who we are (something we can’t control). However, Osama just made my case a lot harder to prove to people on the fence.

Nov 18, 2002 | Comments