Steve Coll Explores Bin Ladens

Forum Introduction

		In his book "The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century," Steve Coll chronicles the lives and fortunes of the family from which Osama bin Laden came. He answers your questions here.

Are the Bushes linked to the bin Ladens? Why were bin Laden family members flown out of the U.S. after 9/11?

What happened to Osama bin Laden's older brother?

If Osama bin Laden removes the U.S. from Saudi Arabia, etc., can he create the new caliphate in this modern world?

How could Osama bin Laden's father have the influence you allege given his death when the child was but 9 years old?

How do you feel the U.S. entry into the Gulf War affected our relations with Arab countries?

How many of the bin Ladens' other 53 children of Mohammed have joined or support Osama?

What is, in your view, Osama bin Laden's ultimate goal?

You describe how the bin Ladens changed during the 1980s. What were the rest of us typically doing?


	David B. of Brooklyn, N.Y., asks:

	What is, in your view, Osama bin Laden's ultimate goal? Is it simply the destruction of Western culture and/or the United States in the name of Allah? Or is there something beyond that in terms of a primary Islamic world culture?

Steve Coll responds:

He's a complicated figure in some respects because he mixes temporal political grievances -- the cause of the Palestinians, the war in Iraq -- with millenarian theology. At times he describes his struggle the way any number of political pundits in the Middle East might. At other times he describes it as a war ordained by God against non-believers that can only end on Judgment Day. I think the latter is what he truly believes; it is certainly what he says over and over.



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