Brahma Chellaney on how Israel's policy of backing Hamas was influenced by U.S. support for mujahideen in Afghanistan

The international focus on the war in Gaza has helped obscure the fact that Israel in the 1980s aided the rise of the Islamist Hamas as a rival to the secular Palestinian Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah.  Israel’s policy was clearly influenced by the U.S. training and arming of mujahideen (or Islamic holy warriors) in Pakistan from multiple countries to wage jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. 

The multibillion-dollar American program from 1980 to create anti-Soviet jihadis represented what still remains the largest covert operation in the Central Intelligence Agency’s history.  In 1985, at a White House ceremony attended by several mujahideen, then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan gestured toward his guests and declared, “These gentlemen are the moral equivalent of America’s Founding Fathers.”

Out of the mujahideen evolved the Taliban and al-Qaida.  As then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton openly admitted in 2010, “We trained them, we equipped them, we funded them, including somebody named Osama bin Laden ... And it didn’t work out so well for us.”

~ Brahma Chellaney, "Israel's Historical Role in the Rise of Hamas," The Japan Times, November 21, 2023

President Reagan meeting with Afghan mujahideen
leaders in the Oval Office in 1983

Osama bin Laden on U.S. sanctions on Iraq

You have starved the Muslims of Iraq, where children die every day.  It is a wonder that more than 1.5 million Iraqi children have died as a result of your sanctions, and you did not show concern.  Yet when 3000 of your people died, the entire world rises and has not yet sat down.

~ Osama bin Laden, "Letter to the American People," November 2002

Osama bin Linden on America's use of nuclear weapons against Japan

That which you are singled out for in the history of mankind, is that you have used your force to destroy mankind more than any other nation in history; not to defend principles and values, but to hasten to secure your interests and profits.  You who dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan, even though Japan was ready to negotiate an end to the war.  How many acts of oppression, tyranny and injustice have you carried out, O callers to freedom?

~ Osama bin Laden, "Letter to the American People," November 2002

Radioactive plume from the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, as

seen from 9.6 km away, in Koyagi-jima, Japan, August 9, 1945

Osama bin Laden on why targeting civilians in the 9/11 attacks was justified

You may then dispute that all the above does not justify aggression against civilians, for crimes they did not commit and offenses in which they did not partake: 

This argument contradicts your continuous repetition that America is the land of freedom, and its leaders in this world.  Therefore, the American people are the ones who choose their government by way of their own free will; a choice which stems from their agreement to its policies.  Thus the American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of their land, and its continuous killing, torture, punishment and expulsion of the Palestinians.  The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government and even to change it if they want.

~ Osama bin Laden, "Letter to the American People," November 2002

Osama bin Laden on the 9/11 attacks

I would like to assure the world that I did not plan the recent attacks, which seems to have been planned by people for personal reasons…  I have been living in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and following its leaders’ rules. The current leader does not allow me to exercise such operations.

I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States.  As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie.  Neither I had any knowledge of these attacks nor I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act.  Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children and other people. 

I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed.  The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; the people who are a part of the US system, but are dissenting against it. 

Or those who are working for some other system; persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilization, nation, country or ideology could survive.  Then there are intelligence agencies in the US, which require billions of dollars worth of funds from the Congress and the government every year…  They need an enemy.

~ Osama bin Laden, interviewed by the Urdu newspaper Karachi Ummat, September 28, 2001

(As quoted by Pepe Escobar, "9/9 and 9/11, 20 Years Later," LewRockwell.com, September 11, 2021.)

Warren Buffett on the reported death of Osama bin Laden

Well, it's always been a mistake to bet against America, since 1776.  And, you know, we take our body blows from time to time, but this country always comes through.  And when we get united, get out of the way.  It--and we are--at moments like this you particularly see that.  And of course, after 9/11 we saw it.  But I've always had enormous faith in this country to do anything, whether it's in economics or whether it's in liberating people or whatever it may be.  And this is just one more dramatic illustration of when the United States sets out to do something, it gets it done.

~ Warren Buffett, chairman, Berkshire Hathaway, CNBC's Squawk Box, May 2, 2011