Twenty Years Ago Osama Bin Laden Declared War Against The U.S.

Osama Bin Laden

Dominic Tierney, The Atlantic: The Twenty Years’ War

Two decades ago, Osama bin Laden officially launched al-Qaeda’s struggle against the United States. Neither side has won.

Exactly two decades ago, on August 23, 1996, Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States. At the time, few people paid much attention. But it was the start of what’s now the Twenty Years’ War between the United States and al-Qaeda—a conflict that both sides have ultimately lost.

During the 1980s, bin Laden fought alongside the mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. After the Soviets withdrew, he went home to Saudi Arabia, then moved to Sudan before being expelled and returning to Afghanistan in 1996 to live under Taliban protection. Within a few months of his arrival, he issued a 30-page fatwa, “Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,” which was published in a London-based newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, and faxed to supporters around the world. It was bin Laden’s first public call for a global jihad against the United States. In a rambling text, bin Laden opined on Islamic history, celebrated recent attacks against U.S. forces in Lebanon and Somalia, and recounted a multitude of grievances against the United States, Israel, and their allies. “The people of Islam had suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Jewish-Christian alliance and their collaborators,” he wrote.

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WNU Editor: I cannot help but feel that people who are being born today will be fighting this war 20 years from now .... and that we will not even be close to seeing a "light at the end of the tunnel" by then. A new strategy screams to be found .... but the current political players do not appear to be capable or willing to offer any solution to this mess that now consumes the lives of literally hundreds of millions of people.