Turkey's solidarity with Hamas is not, of course, based on Arab nationalism, which as a non-Arab nation it does not support. It is instead based on a definition of the Mideast conflict as one between Jews and Muslims, precisely the position of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
Abu Musab al Zarqawi had such a view of holy war. More barbaric, more monstrous even than Osama bin Laden. So much so that Bin Laden opposed many of his ideas. And he did not join al Qaeda, except for one brief period after 2004 where he agreed to be badged as al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
If the Arab Spring was a large nail in the coffin of al-Qaeda's ideology, the death of bin Laden was an equally large nail in the coffin of al-Qaeda the organization.
Osama bin Laden fervently hoped that attacking the United States would create pressure on American leaders to reduce their support for Middle Eastern regimes. Bin Laden believed that without that American support, the Arab regimes would collapse and would be replaced by Taliban-style rulers.
The world is lousy with Arab princes. And if we could have got Osama bin Laden, and saved at some point down the road 3,000 American lives, a few less Arab princes would have been OK in my book.
We know that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has some very dangerous, very important leaders who are tied directly to the top leadership of al Qaeda central, including a man who was formerly Osama bin Laden's secretary.
If you don't understand what al Qaeda was trying to do on 9/11, if you don't have a sense of who Osama bin Laden is as a person, if you don't have a sense of what al Qaeda, the organization, was on 9/11, 9/11 appears to be more or less inexplicable.
It was Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001, not Saddam Hussein and Iraq.
Bin Laden actually is the most European or westernized of all the Arab leaders. He's the one who is the most polished ironically. He's smart and handsome and rich... you know, he's quite the eligible guy. Well trained by the CIA. He's a very dangerous man indeed and he now has this franchise called Al Qaeda, which rivals Starbucks in its ubiquity.
The death of Osama bin Laden marks the most significant development in our fight against al-Qa'ida. I salute President Obama ... in achieving this major accomplishment. ... The death of Osama bin Laden is historic.
The most striking thing is that even before Osama bin Laden was killed, he seemed largely irrelevant to the Arab Spring.
Unfortunately, Osama bin Laden puts his finger on the other longstanding injustices in the Arab world: the conying so. And, tinued occupation of Palestinian land by the Israelis; the enormous, constant Arab anger with the tens of thousands of Iraqi children who are dying under sanctions; the feelings of humiliation of millions of Arabs living under petty dictators, almost all of whom are propped up by the West.
Whether Osama bin Laden is doing it cynically and has no interest in these matters, or whether he's doing it out of genuine conviction, his voice has a tremendous resonance throughout the Arab world. One editorial in a Lebanese paper said it is a matter of great humiliation for the Arabs that the only man who can outline, truthfully, what our humiliations are is an Arab who has to say it from a cave in a foreign country.
My quest to meet Osama bin Laden began in North London early in 1997. In the Dollis Hill section, I contacted Khaled al-Fauwaz, the spokesman for a Saudi opposition group, the Advice and Reformation Committee, which bin Laden had founded.
They found a scrapbook with photos of Osama bin Laden from the '90s, and they're studying each and every photo very, very closely. My favorite shot of Osama bin Laden was right between the eyes.
If we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then, I think that we have to act and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority.
The US military has achieved a decisive blow against al-Qaeda with its commando action against Osama Bin Laden and his killing.