Osama bin Laden

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Last time we talked about the story of 9/11, the aftermath, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the death of Osama bin Laden that was a part of the forever war.

This time we're gonna be talking about what happened next because the response hasn't just lasted for a generation, it's going to endure as a legacy for many years and decades to come.

And while for a time America had almost the whole world behind it, by the end of this period, what followed was Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, torture, drone strikes, and a war on terror that spread across and alienated much of the globe.

Osama bin Laden had wanted to provoke the world's most powerful country into a war that it couldn't easily win and to make America spend its money, exhaust its military, and compromise the values it claimed to defend.

So the uncomfortable question 25 years on is just how far did he succeed?

Because bin Laden is dead, Al-Qaeda was shattered, and there was never another 9/11.

But the Taliban are back in Kabul, jihadist movements have spread across new parts of the world, and some of the institutions created after 9/11 are still with us today.

It's not a trap per se, but into what we know, which is war against a state.

And so when the Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin Laden, it became a war against the Taliban.

So the way you frame this in the book, I think there's a very rich potential here to say, hey, there's some really interesting historical precedents.

And one of the things those comparisons do is they tell us the American state, the global community, the United States allies might have reacted differently.

The first is that our reaction to 9-11, while it seems kind of taken for granted now as inevitable, wasn't, and that understanding that contingency, as we spoke about earlier, allows for the potential, not necessarily that it would happen, but the potential for some breathing room to say, what are the consequences of thinking about it this way? Are there other ways of looking at 19 men hijacking planes from al Qaeda that don't necessarily lend itself to these reactions.

And let's trace that out.

Does that lead us into war in Iraq? Does that lead us to war, period? Does this lead us to kind of more what the Israelis did after Munich? Are there alternatives that would achieve the stated goal, at least right after 9-11, which is to kill Osama bin Laden and dismantle al-Qaeda, which we can discuss as a realistic goal or not? Can we think of...

response differently than then kind of the narrative that arose which is we were innocent and minding our own business and they came and attacked us and they deserve what they get which isn't not true in some ways but there are other ways of looking at it like US foreign policy in in the Middle East had led to certain consequences that allowed for groups like Al Qaeda to exist

Indeed, he certainly does.

This is the first time the name Osama bin Laden, the leader of the terror group al-Qaeda, has been publicly connected with the attacks earlier in the morning.

Air Force One leaves Barksdale Air Force Base at 1.38pm for Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, escorted by two F-16s.

All non-essential staff, including most of the press corps, congressmen and several White House staffers, have been left behind in Louisiana.

Morell shares his opinion that Iran or Iraq are the only two countries capable of carrying out an attack of this scale.

However, he dismisses their participation, as neither country would have anything to gain.

He states his conclusion, The trail will lead to Osama bin Laden.

I'd bet my children's future on that.

How did liberals wind up on their side? And many did.

One in five young Americans now has a positive view of Osama bin Laden.

He's like Luigi Mangione in a turban.

We'll leave it there.

He talks about these being virtuous and just wars.

Really, the only virtuous or just action America could have taken after 9-11 militarily would have been going after Osama bin Laden and his men who are hiding out in the caves of Nagahar, Afghanistan, not going after the Taliban, potentially even negotiating with the Taliban.

And actually getting, capturing Osama bin Laden and allowing him to stand justice in American court and to show the world that we are actually a moral and virtuous people.

That if you commit a crime against the American people, we will hold you accountable.

We are not to be trifled with.

And we did the exact opposite.

You know, he talks about being virtue and justice.

Osama bin Laden lived another decade after the 9-11 terrorist attack, hiding out in Pakistan, plotting more attacks against the United States of America while we were waging war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

"I have never been of the view that we should be sacrificing American lives to try to establish a democratic government in Afghanistan."

If Osama Bin Laden, as well as Al-Qaeda, had chosen to launch an attack when they left Saudi Arabia out of Yemen, would we have ever gone to Afghanistan? Even though the Taliban completely controlled Afghanistan at the time, would we have ever gone? I know it's not fair to ask you questions, this is rhetorical, but raise your hand if you think we should have gone and given up thousands of lives and tens of thousands of wounded.

On Thursday, Biden said he still intended to meet his August 31 deadline for a full withdrawal, but he also said that he would not accelerate the departure because of the bombings.

He said his top military officials had told him that they had the resources to continue the evacuations, even in the face of ongoing threats, while also protecting the airport from what they expected would be more attacks in the days ahead.

And there was a proposal to jump Rangers, US Army Rangers, and block Al-Qaeda with Marines on the Pakistani side of the border, which, 'cause that's the only way you can stop them from going down the other side of the mountain.

George Bush and Dick Cheney did not wanna do that operation because they thought it would cause too many casualties.

And what we didn't know was that they were planning already to invade Iraq, and that they thought the few dozen remnants or few hundred remnants of Al-Qaeda that could walk off that mountain, including Osama bin Laden, would be rolled up by the Pakistanis, 'cause, you know, you give the Pakistanis a billion dollars, they'll do anything we want.

That's not the way it works there.

Now, I know some people might take these conspiracy theories as insensitive, but trust me, there's nothing insensitive about asking questions when it comes to the official story of 9/11.

I mean, the fact that we were told of, from the official story that George Bush and Condoleezza Rice were both briefed that Osama bin Laden was going to attack Americans very soon, and they didn't take that threat serious enough, and then they started a war in the Middle East and lied about weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.

And they lied to us about the conditions after the fact on 9/12, and they said that the air quality was totally fine, and now there's been over 5,000 cancer-related deaths due to the, uh, horrible asbestos that was in the air after the terror attack.

So they have been caught lying about so many aspects of September 11th.

There's a lot of, we can get down the rabbit hole.

But what I try to talk about is just the surface level conspiracy of 9/11 that we can prove, because this is the official story that they tell us, is that on 9/11, it was a horrible terror attack.

But in August, a month before, George Bush and Condoleezza Rice were both briefed by the FBI and potentially the CIA that there was a guy by the name of Osama bin Laden that was planning to potentially attack the United States of America.

And one thing that I like to use as an example, I like to use Operation Northwoods, which is a declassified CIA document that had a similar, similar plan during the Cuban Missile Crisis, that they wanted to do a false flag attack and hijack planes and fly them, you know, make it look like they were Cubans that hijacked it, and then fly into buildings in Miami or somewhere in Florida, and that would be the pretext to starting the war with Cuba.

How did liberals wind up on their side? And many did.

One in five young Americans now has a positive view of Osama bin Laden.

He's like Luigi Mangione in a turban.

[laughing]

They don't talk like Abdul El-Sayed.

Their mother didn't work for an organization that had ties to bin Laden and some other things.

And also, they're not afraid to condemn Sharia law.

Let's start with that.