Hamza bin Laden

This question I've been eager to ask you both because you guys published an article about this just a few weeks ago.

But I noticed on the anniversary of 9-11, al-Qaeda put out a kind of a video and kind of the front man was Hamza bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's son, who the U.S. claimed to have killed seven years ago in Afghanistan.

Is...

Is he really in charge? Is this propaganda? What are they trying to tell the world by raising Bin Laden's son's personage as he's still around? Or is Saif al-Adha really in charge and he's kind of using the Bin Laden name to keep the faithful kind of remembering of what they've done, but also moving forward?

But everything he lays out in his 2023 book, Al-Qaeda and its branches seem to be following it.

So, and in that video, what was interesting is They – al-Qaeda pulled a lot of quotes from Saif al-Adl's book, but not once did they show Saif al-Adl's picture or that Saif al-Adl was featured in any of the footage.

So it is fascinating because of that decentralization and the devolving of authority that Bruce discussed, I think featuring Hamza bin Laden, whether he's alive or dead, ties the groups together and gives them a common name, a bin Laden lineage, while Saif al-Adl is still steering the threads behind the scenes and leading.

And let's not forget, Saif al-Adl has been the mentor and the teacher of Hamza throughout his life and as he was growing up.

Really?

Hamza, Hamza bin Laden.

But-

He's running it now

I don't know if you guys know this, just recently, Al-Qaeda released a video.

Yeah.

It was called A Quarter Century of the 11 September Raids, where they showed an older Hamza bin Laden.

Yeah.

He's back now," you know.

And then if it wasn't those guys like Jalaluddin Haqqani, for example, who had sub-subsequently died, it was the son, right? Siraj Haqqani, who's, comes back in power.

So I think that the, the invasion of Afghanistan, the war in Afghanistan, I think for many, many reasons was a colossal failure, and I don't think that there will ever be any accountability for those failures on the American side.

Yeah, Tom, you, you hit a point.

You know, you, you...

You know, he, you know, the, I think his rationale for not sending more forces into Tora Bora and not actually directly leading the fight with American forces was, well, the intelligence suggests that he could've been in Kandahar, too, bin Laden, or he could've already got into Pakistan.

Well, you know, in terms of the Afghan side of the equation, you only have two choices, right? According to his own logic and his own intelligence, either Tora Bora or Kandahar.

So America, which was then a superpower, it no longer is, but it was then a superpower, couldn't at that point in time muster the forces to go to two spots to find him and kill him and make sure he was dead, really? You know? I mean, that's just how pathetic the thinking is, you know? And, you know, there should've been an overwhelming use of American force to end that son of a bitch and end Al-Qaeda right then and there, and it wasn't, and because the leadership failed.