In October of 2001, a month after the attack on the Towers, the U.S. National Security Advisor asked the networks not to air al-Qaeda footage and the White House Press Secretary asked newspapers not to publish transcripts of bin Laden’s speeches. Today when bin Laden issues a statement, the press focuses its reporting on whether or not it is authentic in a way that downplays its content and draws attention away from the fact that he is still alive despite the U.S.’s best efforts. At last report Bush had claimed capturing him was not important but it is still believed by many that his head on a plate could put the next election in the bag for his side.

Verso has recently published the text of bin Laden's speeches and interviews with helpful annotations, giving readers a chance to hear his own words and judge for themselves. If you are the nervous sort who might avoid delving deeper out of a fear of being seduced, don't worry. Even had his words never been translated into action, this would not be a sympathetic character. Bin Laden is a theocrat, an anti-Semite and a worshipper of death.

I find his hatred of Jews strange, given that one of the clearest messages of Islam is that respect is due to the preceding People of the Book, the Jews and the Christians. The Koran honors their prophets and aims to be a third and final testament. Like many Arabs, bin Laden uses the somewhat dated term Zionist to refer to Israelis and their supporters, perhaps because even speaking the name Israel would be considered too close to recognizing its existence. The effect is that he comes off as loony, since today the term Zionist is mainly associated with the paranoid belief that a conspiracy of Jews secretly rule the world. (In fact, he does believe this. He also believes, as William S. Burroughs did, that the U.S. invented AIDS.)

He says on p. 189 that the Jews “killed the Prophets,” which echoes the oldest slander against them. On p. 204 he simultaneously condemns the Jews as “the allies of America” and America as “the allies of the Jews,” a kind of floating chiasmus, an empty figure of reciprocal guilt by association.

The extravagances of Arab rhetoric, as Hussein’s 1991 “mother of all battles” comment demonstrated, do not translate well. On p. 77, bin Laden praises a fallen ally in these terms: “He is someone who demonstrated very clearly after his murder the extent of the barrenness that has afflicted Muslim women in failing to conceive another man like himself.”

Later he comments on p. 91 in a surprisingly mundane manner on the demographics of terrorism:

Bin Laden is never more awkward than in such moments of near-worldliness. His narrowness has its roots in the closed world of Saudi society, but it would be a mistake to focus on his most relatable offenses rather than his worst ones. It is easy to condemn his ideas about Jews and women because they help us imagine him as a personally reprehensible individual, but his special crime is having declared open season on the innocent bystander.

Bin Laden has decreed that every Muslim has a duty to kill Americans, including civilians. He both professes his hatred and, on a strangely personal note, confesses it:

He maintains that any American who votes and pays taxes is responsible for U.S. foreign policy, and even cites a poll to the effect that two-thirds of Americans supported Clinton’s missile attacks on Afghanistan.

He should really catch one of Leno's man-on-the-street bits. Are ordinary Americans responsible for the policies of the U.S. government? No. Democracy, though it could, does not work as well as that. His occasional claim that the attacks were intended to raise awareness is inconsistent with the major claim that awareness preceded them.

Bin Laden invokes democracy to hold civilians responsible for their government's actions, but he does not believe in it. He refers to it as deceptive and a myth, a cover. On p. 168 he says American law is “the law of the rich and wealthy, who hold sway in the political parties.” Democracy is at best a materialist doctrine to him, a sinful worship of human desires for happiness.

I don't believe there can be responsibility without knowledge. This raises a further question: Is there at least a responsibility to be aware? To this I would also say no. Twice bin Laden quotes Allah telling Mohammed, You are accountable only for yourself. That is what I believe as well.

Because bin Laden does not have the religious authority to make decrees or declare war, the burden continually falls on him to claim that the Islamic world is already under attack by the West and must defend itself. His shift from talking about Saudi Arabia to the occupied Palestinian territories is seen by some in the West as playing to the gallery — if his true cause were Palestine, he would go fight there — but it is really part of expanding his scope to internationalism. He finds no shortage of examples of conflict between Muslims and the West — Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir — and takes a dim view of the UN's interventions, considering it a puppet of America.

He always reverses any accusation made against him. Ask him if he’s a terrorist and he’ll tell you that the U.S. is terrorist. His denial of responsibility seems strategic, an attempt at cunning inconsistent with his usual straightforwardness. With each opportunity, however, he comes closer to admitting his involvement.

Seen from Bin Laden’s point of view, terrorism is an effective means. The Mujahidin defeated the superior strength of the Soviets in Afghanistan by guerilla fighting, as Allah willed it, and today the once mighty Soviet Union does not even exist. The U.S. retreated from Somalia after minimal casualties and more recently Spain withdrew from the allied coalition after one day of bomb attacks in Madrid. None of this gives bin Laden any reason to respect the fighting spirit of the West. To an old soldier like him, our use of aerial bombardment instead of ground troops is a clear mark of cowardice.

It would be naïve and sententious to conclude by saying that we should listen more carefully to what bin Laden is saying in order to know our enemy, since today we live under an administration that doesn’t even listen to the people who listen, the CIA. The U.S. is like a travelling businessman who spends more on strippers than on his kids back home: $200 billion stuffed into new spending on the Iraqi campaign and nothing new for public schools, student loans, or expanding health coverage.

While bin Laden's speeches always open and close with formulas from the Koran and sayings of Mohammed, in the middle is a political analysis that some leftists might agree with, its essence being that the U.S. does evil abroad, exploiting weak nations for their resources. It not only sounds like Chomsky, it is Chomsky, and it happens to be true. U.S. foreign policy is typically defended either by saying it’s good for you (i.e., preventing elections is freedom, commandeering resources is ‘free trade’), by denying any possible alternative, or by discrediting its critics. It is a rare breed of lunatic who can claim it is just.

But it would be a grave error to take bin Laden for a heroic revolutionary. His greatest enemy is unbelief. What little progress we have would be lost under the religious government he calls for. Women would stay home or venture out only as beshrouded cargo and there would be no music or dancing or holding hands on the street between non-cousins. Democracy and science would be the first of his mortal enemies beheaded.

The neo-cons misleadingly label it fascism but it would actually be far worse, a new dark ages. They use the subtly racist and inflammatory term Radical Islam rather than the calmer and more accurate Islamic radicalism. (If your ears can't hear the difference, try comparing the tone of “Christian America” to “American Christians.” The second is mere description while the former is sneakily defamatory.) Calling bin Laden fascist is a way of drawing attention from the fact that he is a fundamentalist, against the separation of church and state and against the sensuality of life.

In the end, I am left standing on a very narrow strip of ground, trying to maintain balance with one foot in the air. The U.S. kills civilians but it doesn’t advocate it. What it does in practice it does not admit in theory. Am I launching a new sideline in casuistry by saying that there is something potentially redeeming in this? Isn't there something more than hypocrisy and empty propaganda here, a faint glimmer of human feeling, a spark to be fanned in the hope of rekindling human warmth? We do our hating episodically and as individuals, not all together as a country and most definitely not as a creed. Isn't that worth something?

We still stand for something even if we never live up to it. False though they may be, our ideals are still better than outright slaughter and more likely to somehow become true ideals than murder ever is to bring justice.

Postscript 4/6/06: When faith is defined as fighting the unbelievers, everything good and kind in religion is lost. It is war with the unbeliever that gives purpose to bin Laden's conception of religion. On p. 231 he offers a cogito of militancy: “You fight, so you exist.” Fully realized and universally accepted, his faith would wither away out of its own meaninglessness.

Let us not mistake justice for being the weaker of two rivals. Islam as presented here is the purest imperialism, from Mohammed out to his followers and to entire cities, and from his race out across the region, spreading as the Arabs conquered the Turks and the Persians.

At times terrorism seems nothing more than vendetta, an endless cycle of violence, a back and forth payback-is-a-bitch for both sides. But perhaps the true purpose of bin Laden's style of terrorism is to create awe through the spectacle of a martyr. Any cult of warriors is necessarily a cult of martyrs. No one ever brags about having won a battle without a scratch; that would be shameful and unworthy. Your wounds are your badges, and the ultimate wound is death, the only real proof of having had courage. On p. 172 bin Laden boasts that his followers “desire death more than you desire life.”

If we understand God's desires as opposed to our own, then we take God as a dark shearing storm of hatred against us, one which can only be appeased by the destruction of others and finally ourselves. Not knowing God, death becomes our god.