[InclinedPlane]

We know what Osama wanted, he's made many public statements. He wanted the western world to stop interacting with the Muslim/arab world because he thought the west was a corrupting influence on traditional Islamic and arab values.

[CWuestefeld]

Sure, he's a mass murderer. But he'd never stoop to lying in a public statement.

[InclinedPlane]

I get your meaning but it doesn't have much weight without any evidence. Certainly Osama has lied, and is capable of lying. But we do not automatically question the stated motives of murderers and bombers without additional evidence. We do not second guess whether abortion clinic bombers are actually anti-abortion. We do not hypothesize what the real motives of the unabomber were, we take it on face value that he opposed the advance of industry and technology etc.

Similarly, we have no good cause to question Osama's stated motives. When an organization repeatedly makes clear their motives through public statements; when that organization undertakes combat operations at such great risk and cost that they employ suicide squads to carry them out and when those operations comport with their stated motives; and when their other activities also closely align with those statements why question those motives? The only reason is because someone has a political cause they wish to shore up by portraying a major political force like Al Qaeda as something it's not.

For what it's worth, Osama was right. The west has been a corrupting influence on the Arab and Muslim world, eroding traditional values such as misogyny, oppressive political and social institutions, stultifying economic systems, etc. For the most part I think this has been a good development, as I value individual liberty, education based on rationality and science, the spread of industrialization and broadbased wealth, etc. But such things are roadblocks to the creation of a new caliphate, or something much like it, in the Islamic world, which is the ultimate secondary goal of groups like Al Qaeda after they have managed to isolate the Islamic world from external influences.

[CWuestefeld]

we have no good cause to question Osama's stated motives. When an organization repeatedly makes clear their motives through public statements; when that organization undertakes combat operations at such great risk and cost...

Let me ask everyone who believes OBL's stated motives: when GWB tells us repeatedly in public that we must invade Iraq because of the threat of WMD, and that the objectives have nothing to do with protecting oil supplies, should we take that statement at face value? I mean, the US through GWB has invested tons of resources, including the lives of its troops, into fighting that war, so surely the President's statements regarding the motivations can be accepted without question, right?

I'm not taking sides here. I'm trying to say that nobody ever truly knows the motivations of another person; in fact, frequently we don't truly understand the roots of our own motivations. See, for example, discussion in Mises' Human Action.

[roguecoder]

But Bush did tell us why we invaded Iraq: "He tried to kill my dad." Before he was even elected he indicated a desire to invade Iraq because he saw it as the hight of his father's presidency left unfinished. "If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it," he said on the campaign trail. He never once stuck to the WMD story; it was just what they made Powell say in public as a cover for all the other reasons he gave (see the Downing Street Memo for more details.)

If Osama had came out with a multitude of mutually-contradictory statements we'd have reason to doubt him, but he was amazingly consistent from when the CIA started funding him until the US military gunned him down.

[babblefrog]

I think GWB really did think there were WMDs there. And protecting the oil supplies from who, exactly? They were going to go onto the market anyway.

[rooshdi]

Are you really suggesting murdering hundreds of innocent people is more honorable than lying for the sake of easing people's fears? I don't respect lying either, but let's not get crazy here.

[seclorum]

Its America we're talking about here, where every single US President of the last 100 years has been responsible for the mass murder of innocents...

[rooshdi]

I'm not defending the war crimes of the US either. All I'm saying is do not conflate lying with the obviously more extreme act of actually killing people.

[seclorum]

I agree, you can't say they're equivalent acts, but its no surprise that lying happens after killing ..