User:Tom harrison/911-motives

Motives
Osama bin Laden's declaration of a holy war against the United States, and a fatwā signed by bin Laden and others calling for the killing of American civilians in 1998, are seen by investigators as evidence of his motivation. In various pronouncements before and after the attacks, al-Qaeda explicitly cited three motives for its activities against Western countries: the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia,  U.S. support of Israel, and sanctions against Iraq. After the attacks, bin Laden and al-Zawahiri released additional video tapes and audio tapes, some of which repeated those reasons for the attacks. Two particularly important publications were bin Laden's 2002 "Letter to America", and a 2004 video tape by bin Laden.

Bin Laden interpreted the Prophet Muhammad as having banned the "permanent presence of infidels in Arabia". In 1996, bin Laden issued a fatwā calling for American troops to leave Saudi Arabia. In 1998, al-Qaeda wrote, "for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples." In a December 1999, interview, bin Laden said he felt that Americans were "too near to Mecca", and considered this a provocation to the entire Muslim world. One analysis of suicide terrorism suggested that without U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, al-Qaeda likely would not have been able to get people to commit suicide in this way.

In his November 2002 "Letter to America", bin Laden cited the United States' support of Israel as a motivation: "The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price, and pay for it heavily." In 2004 and 2010, bin Laden again connected the September 11 attacks with U.S. support of Israel. Bin Laden claimed in 2004 that the idea of destroying the towers had first occurred to him in 1982, when he witnessed Israel's bombardment of high-rise apartment buildings during the invasion of Lebanon. Several analysts, including Mearsheimer and Walt, also say one motivation for the attacks was U.S. support of Israel. In the 1998 fatwā, al-Qaeda identified the Iraq sanctions as a reason to kill Americans, condemning the "protracted blockade" among other actions constituting a declaration of war against "Allah, his messenger, and Muslims."

In addition to those cited by bin Laden and al-Qaeda, analysts have suggested other motives, including western support of non-Islamist authoritarian regimes in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and northern Africa, and western troops in some of these countries. Other authors suggest that humiliation resulting from the Islamic world falling behind the Western world – this discrepancy made especially visible by recent globalization - and a desire to provoke the U.S. into a broader war against the Islamic world, in the hope of motivating more allies to support al-Qaeda. Others have argued that 9/11 was a strategic way to provoke America into a war that incites a pan-Islamic revolution.