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Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei
This is wrong and offbase on a great many accounts. You do realize that the Bin Laden family is comprised of over 50 children Osama being a Jan Brady and son to one of the senior Bin Ladens least favorite wifes. Osama was never an important person before any of this went down, except for his actions in Afghanistan in the 80's, where the Saud family sent all the nutjob extremists to get them out of the kingdom. Osama's family had exclusive rights to Saudi Arabia contracts for building, some of which Osama worked on being a member of the family. Osama never dealt with the US, his family did, remember there were over 50 members, and by many accounts Osama is the black sheep with his fundie ways.
And your last paragraph is out of sync with the actual breakdown of time and relationships. America funded the Pakistani ISI (intelligence) during the Soviet-Afghan conflict (to the tune of 2-3 billion dollars), this was because we couldn't directly give them money because it was Islamist-nationalist conflict, America didn't fit in. The ISI in return funnled the money to the factions of the mujahadeen that they supported. After the Soviet presence left Afghanistan many of the mujahadeen remained and there was civil war and chaos until the Taliban was formed in the mid-90's and assumed power. As such in no way did we fund the Taliban.
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The first part was wrong on a little, i'll admit that. He himself didnt have direct ties with the US but his family certainly did, and were held in high esteem in the US. They often interacted with the US government and probably still do. Just because Osama was the black sheep of the family doesn't mean he didn't interact with them. Yes it was a large family and some of his family didnt have contact with him for long periods of time, but that happens in every family. Every family has their black sheep, and some parts of families may disown other parts of their family. Because this is such a large family with a complex weaving of relationships these things happen, and are understandable.
I said he was in the business of building buildings for rich people. This was true, holding exclusive building rights in a country as rich as Saudi Arabia (even for a large family like that) REQUIRES power. Do you have any idea how much stuff has been built in Saudi Arabi over the past few decades? How many buildings went up? They got their hands on money and the country explanded vertically in an explosion of wealth. A HUGE chunk of that wealth ending up in the hands of the Bin Ladin family, and also in Osama's hands (we're talking billions of dollars). With money comes power. Osama was, as you said "important" in Afghanistan in the 80's and that's when most of the shit went down, he remained a figurehead throughout that time and into the 90's up to 2001. He may not have been the leader of the country but he was *a* leader and major funder of that countries main terrorist group. So to say he had no power is wrong. He had whatever power he wanted in that region, he just chose not to use it to the extent he could on most occasions.
As for my last statement i should have definitely expanded a ton on it, but i didnt feel like it. Yea the US sent our money to Pakistan in an attempt to avoid direct interaction with the forces facing the soviet union. If we funded them directly it would have been seen as an act of war most likely. So the money got sent to Pakistan and they funneled it to the hands of fighters, and other people. Lots of different groups of fighters, and groups. After the region fell into civil war the taliban took over, they basically materialized over a short period of time. "Students of Islamic Knowledge Movement" is what they were. Basically a group of people that were.. as the name suggests.. students. Some were fighters too. And they also came out of Pakistan with funding from Pakistan (oh my), and were used by Pakistan on certain occasions and missions, like escorts. After the group saw what they could do they used their power to take over Afghanistan, and pretty quickly. Not everyone liked this (northern alliance, who controlled maybe 10% of the northern part of afghanistan) but that was mainly ethnic conflict. They wouldn't have liked them to begin with, fighting against them is what they do. The taliban didn't end the civil war in Afghanistan, they just had the strongest force and therefore controlled the country (or atleast 90% of it).
Yes i'll admit that that one last statement was messed up. The people in charge over there in afghanistan were not very liked by the US later on, but that was because the taliban stripped the country of everything western, and didnt treat women very well.. and killed people regularly in public executions... etc. However they did help to bring SOME order to the chaos over there and whip the region into shape, that was in US interests. And we all know how the US likes it's interests. We'll get into bed with whoever it takes to get what we want done. Sure a huge flaming pile of shit may erupt after that, but then that just gives us something else to do. When you use people, it often comes back to bite you in the ass, like it did in this case. You help the funding and training of different ethnic groups who don't get along to fight a single enemy, what happens when the single enemy is defeated? Well, gotta fight someone right? Luckily there's still the other groups you hate. You have had a common cause once, but that cause is gone, so now it's back to fighting. The taliban kept that stuff in check, and the US liked that, it was only when they went out of control and started banning everything western, killing people, and turning women into slaves that they turned into an enemy.