Clinton refused to pursue Osama’s extradition, fearing insufficient evidence to indict him in America. There is not even any hard evidence linking Osama to 9/11. America cannot afford to jail Osama because numerous terrorists will blackmail America into releasing him; they will target US interests abroad and kidnap Americans to exchange for Osama. Osama in an American prison would become too much a symbol for Muslims. It might not be so; Muslims might turn away from the humiliated leader, as they substantially abandoned the Blind Sheikh before him. But the risks for America are unwarrantedly high, and the Americans would never attempt a show trial of Osama, except perhaps as a pre-election stunt. The US Administration prefers to keep Osama as blame-for-everything national security threat. All the videos of Osama that have surfaced after 2001 are either forgeries or show signs of heavy editing, suggesting that Osama exists by now in virtual reality only. It is easy to deal with the Muslim mentality. Osama, if captured, should be castrated, packed into pigskins, and drowned in filth. That would preclude the accounts of his martyrdom. At any rate, his survival is much worse in PR terms than his mythologized death could ever be.

Osama, if alive and reasonably well, is not particularly dangerous. He can stage a mass attack or two, but is unable to lead a mass insurrection. Muslim crowds would join him if he were speaking in Cairo, but not hiding in Afghan mountains. Media have inflated Osama-the-strategic-nobody into Osama-the-legend, an image welcomed by Muslims and the West alike.

Osama is oblivious to strategic realities. The victory against the Russians in Afghanistan was not a Muslim victory, but a product of tribal liberation struggle, Pakistani safe haven and logistics, American and British weapons, and Saudi money. The situation was unique, and cannot be replicated in Gaza under the nose of Israel or in totalitarian Egypt. Osama fails to realize that there are no Afghan mountains in America. Muslims can perpetrate a few terrorist acts in the West, but are fundamentally incapable of launching a large-scale guerrilla war like in Afghanistan.

Osama is a typical Saudi: semi-educated, artful but otherwise less than smart, and arrogant. Other Saudis pay families of Palestinian suicide bombers or Hamas, come to the jihad safari in Afghanistan, and call for the liberation of Jerusalem. Saudis positioned themselves at the head of the international terrorist syndicate without being involved in its day-to-day activities. Osama went a step further than his compatriots and imagines that he controls the worldwide jihad from his villa on Islamic frontiers. Real guerrillas don’t care about his self-assumed leadership as long as he disburses some cash.

Osama is not the Warren Buffett of the desert. His business empire sells cashews and the like. Osama, to all appearances, is not directly involved in the drug trade. He relies on dependable collection of accounts receivable (al Qaeda probably doesn’t have a problem with bad debts), smuggling, and an available pool of labor among militants in his camps. Osama’s investments in terrorism are incomparably lower than Iran’s, Syria’s, or Muslim Brotherhood’s. His entire network of training camps in Sudan cost $2 million at the most, and accommodated less than a thousand jihadists at a time. As the events show, even of those volunteers very few committed terrorist acts. Training of terrorists—lone wolves in a hostile environment—requires superb psychological skills. The required level of training is so high that Libya could not build terrorist units of its own and relied on foreign mercenary terrorists. Osama’s camps concentrated on regular military training, which was irrelevant to terrorists until America gave them a chance in Iraq. Osama built shacks rather than army camps, and his training and ideological work came to failure.

That all Arab terrorists cooperate with security agencies once arrested and divulge sensitive information also shows the poor quality of their training. Osama might not have much choice in the matter; Israeli police know that a ritual of a few slaps makes Palestinian terrorists talk. Osama wrongly projects Arab cowardice onto Americans, and imagines they ran from Yemen and Somalia under Muslim attacks (US troops only transited Yemen and had no business in Somalia). Arab cowardice in jails is a function of their collectivism and lack of ideologically inspired determination. Arabs are not used to individualism and thus to individual action. Separated from their mob, they quickly succumb to enemies. The Arabs thus make bad lone terrorists and soft interrogation targets. Considering Arab cowardice and treachery, the absence of voluntary defections from Bin Laden’s camp is puzzling—unless we accept that Osama just doesn’t have a significant number of associates to defect.

Initially in Afghanistan, Osama tried to position himself as religious leader. The Afghan-Soviet war was a tribal war of liberation, with no religious overtones for the participants. Osama tried to instill religious zeal in the Afghans, and sponsored religious education in mujahedeen camps—to no avail. After unsuccessful attempts to author jihad fatwas, Osama finally resigned himself to arranging the necessary fatwas from third-tier Muslim scholars. Osama’s important achievement lies in bridging the gap between religion and politics—something that Jews fail to do, causing us to assimilate. Osama argues that religion is actionable and shapes strategic reality. For him, Islam equals freedom of Muslim expression equals fighting the American and Israeli intruders.

Osama’s morals are flawed. He voiced no opposition to the Taliban’s slaughter of Afghan Shiites. He was unconcerned by the clearly unreasonable number of Black Muslim casualties (250:1) in the attacks on the US embassies in Africa.

Osama’s goals are inherently antagonistic to those of local terrorists. They act locally while Osama thinks globally. Domestic terrorist groups don’t hope for worldwide dominance but vie for more political power locally. They aim to terrorize local governments into a degree of acquiescence, rather than wage jihad on Western Europe. Islamic terrorists are normal nationalist guerrillas who want money and power. They concentrate on gaining a foothold in their countries and are reluctant to answer Osama’s calls for worldwide Islamic action. In Egypt, Algiers, Lebanon, and Palestine local terrorists distance themselves from Osama to avoid being stigmatized as Muslim crackpots. They insist on the rationality of their goals and cannot afford to subscribe to Osama’s jihadist notions. Osama, on the other hand, has no choice but to proclaim jihad.

He failed to establish his group as an independent meaningful force in Afghanistan, Sudan, and Somalia. Al Qaeda is present in many countries, but has substantial power in none of them. Osama is everyone’s friend, but no one’s commander. He founded the World Islamic Front to convert his good relations with many terrorist groups into a formal office, but very few terrorist organizations joined the Front. Hardened guerrillas rejected the idea of ceding even a nominal power to their nice Saudi sponsor. Osama’s ideology is too pan-Muslim to unite Muslim terrorists. Amorzi, who blew up a Bali nightclub declared, “For the white people, it serves them right.” Islamic terrorism is a generic name for a host of very different forces: from racists like Jemaah Islamiya’s Amorzi to nationalists like Hamas’ Haniyeh to insurgents like Afghan’s Hekmatyar to Taliban fundamentalists. They lack common goals or enemies, and will not accept Osama as a director. They use Islam the way Russians used Marx and Hegel, by fishing for out-of-context quotes. Osama’s dream of an Islamic caliphate is irrelevant to them: Egyptians are not going to unite with Saudis who in turn detest Afghanis who detest Black Muslims.

Osama likely regarded the Taliban as expendable, and is delighted to see the US-propped government in Kabul failing and arousing far more popular hatred than Taliban. It was worth it for Osama to lose the Taliban in order for mujahedeen fundamentalists—his close friends—to form the Afghan government under US auspices. Now the US insists on turning a successful punishment expedition into an unsuccessful occupation: The Taliban insurgency is growing, threatening the government of US puppet Karzai. Instead of leaving Afghanistan victorious as they should have done five years ago, America is headed into another defeat—and Osama will claim its laurels. The Taliban are not especially close to Osama; they just cannot refuse hospitality to a prominent Muslim. The status of a guest is hugely important among mountaineer Muslims, and the US pressure to extradite Osama predictably made protecting him a matter of honor the for the Taliban. It took the US a century to quash the lawlessness of the Wild West, and civilizing the Afghans would take centuries. Osama’s power play with Musharaff came out excellently: Osama pointedly avoided criticizing Musharaff until the general embraced America against the pro-Pakistani Taliban. When Pakistani public opinion overwhelmingly turned against Musharaff, Osama too anathemized him. After the US, in its tradition of neglecting friends and rewarding enemies, spent tremendously in Afghanistan and Iraq but provided very little assistance to Pakistan in exchange for betraying the Taliban and Kashmir, Osama’s criticism of Musharaff was vindicated, adding to his tremendous popularity among Pakistanis. The strategic stupidity of Osama’s enemies plays into his hands.

It turns out now that Al Qaeda was the only force which consistently opposed Saddam during his rule, and now Al Qaeda in Iraq fights Baathist insurgents supported by the US. America consistently fails to employ simple and obvious methods for discrediting Osama: describing him as a frightened cave dweller, as a stupid Saudi, a donor not a fighter, a thief investing donated money into his businesses. Instead, successive American administrations have trumpeted Osama as a major threat to US national security, immeasurably increasing his standing in the eyes of Muslims. Every time an American president mentions Osama’s name instead of referring to him equivocally, Osama’s popularity rises. It’s a wonder that no advisor has ever told the Administration such simple things about Arab mentality.

The Western attitude developed in Arabs a child complex. They expect to be patronized by benevolent giants like America: moralistic developed societies fit the paternal cognitive mold. The Arabs don’t expect severe punishment. They rather expect the West to tolerate Osama’s misbehavior and the Iranian nuclear program alike. American missile strikes in the wake of the Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings were extremely offensive to Muslims. They were seen as cruel, disproportionate punishment. America broke the paternalistic mold without sufficient force to press the Arabs into the submissive mold of a master-servant relationship.

The West debates irrelevant questions akin to that of how many angels can dance on a pin’s tip. One such question is whether Islamists hate the West for what it does or for what it is? What one is predetermines what one does. America cannot stop buying oil from Muslims (always at ostensibly low prices), opposing (if nominally) Muslim oppression of women, broadcasting, selling, and generally interacting. If America were to withdraw from the Middle East, it would still influence the Middle East as a beacon influences ships. Muslims visiting America would bring home wondrous stories of Hollywood, affluence, freedom of the press, elections, decadence, sexual permissiveness, and atheism. America cannot withdraw from the world because the world is attracted to America. The Muslim relationship with America is that of love and hate, or rather love and jealousy. Islamists concentrate on jealousy. America is more visible, but if it disappeared Islamists would hate Spain, Russia, or whomever. Hostile ideologies clash in the global village just like hostile neighbors clash in a small village. America symbolizes the crash of the paternalist values of traditional societies which the Islamists are used to. Osama hates America because it insulted him by snatching the first jihad victory in twelve centuries. Osama is keenly aware that Stingers rather than Kalashnikoffs enabled the Afghans to win against the Soviets so quickly. Osama is also aware that he has lost all his battles against the West. Russia withdrew but America rules in Afghanistan, business is as usual in US embassies worldwide, the USS Cole is repaired, and the WTC shock is long gone without even having left a scar on the economic face of America. Osama’s hopefuls have betrayed him: Hamas rejects jihad in favor of nationalist struggle and even agrees to a cease-fire settlement with Israel. The Moro insurgency faded into insignificance. Kashmiri insurgents have proved incapable of significantly breaching the Indian line-of-control. The Chechens have reached an agreement with Moscow, Egyptian Islamic Jihad has abandoned its fight against Mubarak’s regime, terrorist organizations worldwide did not join Osama’s World Islamic Front, and common Muslims only applaud him from the sidelines. Egyptians would not even hypothetically elect Osama if he were running against Mubarak—they value stability, not jihad. They certainly wouldn’t elect Osama for a second term. Common Muslims cheer Osama as they cheer their favorite football player. They also cheered Saddam in the wake of the escalation leading to the US invasion of Iraq. To their primitive mentality, anyone who defies a giant is praiseworthy; so did Jews praise David against Goliath. Retaliation against Muslim crowds for Al Qaeda’s terrorism would turn the Muslims against Osama just like the Israeli war with Lebanon temporarily turned the locals against Hezbollah.

Osama’s famed long-term planning is a function of his inability to act. He could easily launch a guerrilla war against Israeli and American soft targets abroad, such as tourists and businesses. Instead of blowing up hotels, Al Qaeda could keep killing individuals and achieve a significant terror effect. The only explanation for his failure to do this is that Osama lacks the resources for even such limited actions. He repeatedly called for attacks against American targets to force the US to release the Blind Sheikh, but he failed to actually stage any; IG staged some shootings on its own regardless of Osama’s pronouncements.

Osama failed on numerous occasions in his attempts to reconcile warring Afghan armies or hostile Egyptian groups. All groups in Afghanistan, the from Taliban to the Northern Alliance, welcomed Osama specifically because he was an honored guest without a political agenda in Afghanistan. In fact, the Northern Alliance’s Masood welcomed Osama upon his eviction from Sudan, even though Arab guerrillas in Afghanistan had joined the Taliban in fighting the Northern Alliance shortly before; Masood evidently did not strongly connect Osama with the Arab Afghans. Then Arab Afghans fought the Northern Alliance again in 2000, though Osama could not possibly attack his friend and host. Osama exerted little influence on the Arab Afghans.

Osama failed to persuade various domestic terrorist groups to adopt his “America-first” approach. Only after countries like Egypt mounted pressure on local terrorists did a few militant groups subscribe to Osama’s strategy of targeting America before turning on local dictators. Osama’s anti-Americanism is a function of his inability to act on a micro-level. He lacks the expertise and infrastructure to wage a terrorist war against any meaningful Islamic dictator, and waging war on America is much simpler. America cannot secure its far-flung assets worldwide or effectively pursue terrorists who find refuge in failed states. America’s only option to stop attracting terrorists is to transform Muslim states into similarly soft targets. That already happened in Iraq. If America succeeds in democratizing Egypt, the weakened Egypt will again attract terrorists who find local operations cheaper and more convenient.

Consider also the attack on the Limburg oil tanker in Yemen; attacks on major oil assets are a big no-no, certain to alienate Muslim sponsors and drive the Westerners mad. A loyal dog has suddenly gone mad and should be killed. But besides a few incidents—essentially, goodwill gestures toward America—the Saudi and Yemeni governments have tolerated Osama’s affiliates, so attacks in those countries make little sense. The absence of a pan-Arab hunt for Osama shows that Muslim dictators didn’t buy the US version of Osama’s involvement in the Riyadh bombings and Limburg attack. America is wrong to drive a wedge between Osama and his state sponsors. While a lack of state sponsorship will impede Osama’s work a bit, more importantly it will also remove the necessity for moderation. Osama likely has some nuclear waste by now to make radiological bombs; it is implausible that the shipments intercepted by security services represent all of Osama’s purchases. Osama’s Muslim state sponsors discourage him from crossing the line of CBRN weapons.

Osama can only be a hero against liberal America with its vast soft underbelly of worldwide interests. He is powerless against Muslim regimes which, unlike Israel or America, engage in massive extrajudicial operations and collective punishment. For example, Egypt’s hardest blow against Islamic guerrillas was not the torture in its jails, but the inconspicuous measure of arresting hundreds of Islamic someones wherever a terrorist act is committed in Egypt. The groups which perpetrated the attacks had to take care of dozens, sometimes hundreds of families whose men were jailed because of their attacks. That simple, relatively humane measure made terrorist activity in Egypt prohibitively expensive for established groups. Small irresponsible groups were quickly caught and tortured. Osama is right to target enemy civilians—that’s the only effective mode of war. He can afford to target American civilians only because of the absurd American restraint. Had the US retaliated in full force against Sudan, Afghanistan, and other allies of Al Qaeda, Osama’s support base would have evaporated in the blink of eye. A CBN attack on America may provoke just such a reaction: American civility evaporating in a major war. America’s aggression against Iraq draws volunteers to Bin Laden now, but with the use of sufficient cruelty against the supportive towns, the stream of volunteers would end quickly.

Osama is dangerous to America because, like any giant, it is vulnerable to mirco-level threats. Sort of a mouse killing an elephant. A strategically proper response to Bin Laden would be to offer rewards totaling say, fifty million dollars for Osama and his associates. If mercenaries won’t come up with Osama’s head, then spend a bit more on CIA operations. Instead, America overreacts with expensive campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq, and less conspicuous operations. A number of adversaries like Osama can bleed America, perhaps not to death, but to a very uncomfortable state. The losses of small entities are limited by their very size, but empires bleed for a long time. A global empire has to strengthen worldwide in response to an asymmetrical threat; the US spent billions on improving the security of its embassies after the cheap attacks in Kenya and Tanzania. The only proper way for large nation-states to cope with asymmetrical threats is to abandon the guarantee of micro-level security. Nation-states were built around the promise of total security to their citizens; asymmetric warfare signals a return to the historical norm of no micro-level security. In other words, America needs to almost ignore statistically minor losses—even such losses as ocurred in the WTC attack. The absence of massive reaction would make terrorism politically futile.

Osama is renowned for caring for his associates, who tenderly call him Abu Abdallah. That fame stems from him setting up hospices for wounded Arab Afghans and providing for the families of captured terrorists. Most hospices by now have been taken down, and Osama doesn’t seem to offer lifetime pensions for crippled Arab Afghans. His help to the families is irregular and small; according to al Najjar, Osama paid $100 per month to families of captured EIJ members. Charity is a beloved Muslim activity, simple to set up, and Osama can easily collect money for it. No wonder he pays attention to charity.

Osama consciously creates a public image for himself. He claims an economics degree from Jeddah University, though the records show he never graduated or even studied that discipline. His humility doesn’t square with the number of his wives, at least four until 1998 and the number has probably grown since then; Osama has begotten more than two dozen children.

Osama lacked substantial battlefield experience in the Afghan war, and his most trumpeted battlefield accounts refer to minor battles against the fledgling Afghan government, such as near Jalalabad in 1989. Osama ran fund-raisers (mostly among his family friends), channeled small amounts of money to hospitals, paid for transporting Arabs to Afghanistan, and was engaged in similarly non-essential operations—mostly Islamic charities in Pakistan. His fame stemmed from snobbery: embattled and poor Afghans were flattered by the rich young Saudi’s involvement. Osama fostered that snobbery by trumpeting connections with his father’s business empire. A legend has it that Osama brought to Afghanistan a lot of construction equipment from his Saudi company. Given the difficulties of transporting heavy construction equipment from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan, any such large-scale operation is unlikely, and Osama could have bought the equipment in Pakistan or bought Russian equipment already in Afghanistan. The assistance from the largest Saudi company was a PR trick. The assistance was a strategic nuisance: Osama, like a megalomaniac, built highways and tunnels in the Afghan mountains instead of spending the funds efficiently. His help to Afghanistan came too late to influence events and was negligible compared to the American or the official Saudi aid to the mujaheddin.

Hollywood horror movies endow aggressors with bizarre features; the media treat terrorists similarly. But they are not bizarre exceptions to human nature. They are normal religious nationalists willing to die for their cause, but they do not seek death like members of some death cult; Bin Laden evades American attempts to kill him. In regular armies, soldiers undertake practically suicidal missions defending their comrades and country; terrorists operate similarly. People who strongly identify with ideas might die physically but continue living in their ideas; shahedeen die, but live on as part of the ummah. Neither are terrorists monsters; compare the 9/11 civilian death toll to the fire-bombings of Dresden and Tokyo. The absence of a mass following among Muslims doesn’t prove Bin Laden wrong: John Brown failed to rally a significant number of slaves, but nevertheless greatly advanced the abolitionist cause.

Westerners despise Bin Laden for his ideology of barbaric intolerance. Civilized, affluent people are afraid to show intolerance because it endangers their lifestyle: the victims of their intolerance can strike back. People preoccupied with the pursuit of material wealth abandon the fight for moral values and rationalize their cowardice by abandoning moral absolutes. But the entire human system of values is calibrated with moral values. People who don’t pursue moral imperatives pursue other things even less. They want welfare rather than work, and submission to government rather than responsibility.

Osama is highly responsible. Westerners seek to enjoy every moment of their lives, and grow impatient. They want all policies to bring immediate results. Osama, in the service of eternal God, is very patient—not because he is superhuman, but because he cannot change the political situation immediately. Neither are his means outdated. Westerners launched massive wars in Algiers, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, but believe the age of war is over. The inhabitants of the Pax Romana and Peace of Westphalia worlds thought similarly. Jews in 1939 thought that ethnic or religious wars had become unthinkable. Osama is far more realistic.

Taking the fight into America is not apocalyptic lunacy, but the only viable way to win the war. The Soviets lost the war in Afghanistan despite their cruelty because the mujahedeen had safe havens in Pakistan; they could regroup, rearm, and relax. Israel similarly loses against the West Bank terrorists by allowing them safe havens in Jenin and elsewhere. Osama has to attack America if he is to deny his enemy a place to relax; continuous strain breaks the will to fight.

Osama is not a genius who rallied the Muslim nations. The Muslim community is too huge, diverse, and dispersed to feel communal bonds. Other Muslims didn’t help their Indonesian coreligionists who were hit by the tsunami, and few Muslims came to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet invaders. The seventh-century jihad was waged for spoils rather than religion, and since then the Arabs have shown no religious zeal to fight. Arabs want US visas rather than Palestinian statehood. Osama attracted into his ranks one thousandth of one percent of the world’s Muslims. Many more admire him as a symbol but have no intention of joining him. Osama draws adventurers rather than Muslims. That’s not Osama’s fault, but human nature. Rabbi Kahane similarly failed to gather a significant number of American Jews to confront Russia over the emigration restrictions on Soviet Jews. Osama was even less successful in garnering worldwide Muslim support for the Palestinian insurgency. He repeatedly condemned Muslim governments and clergy for their failure to channel military support to the Palestinians, and his once-beloved Hamas proved a disappointment, unconcerned with global Islamic struggle.