This story piqued my apocalyptic fears earlier today, though I could not find the details of it until I got home from work.
Osama bin Laden is the perfect solution for fanatical Arab states. Through him they are able to prosecute a war which officially and diplomatically they decry. The hobnailed boot of Arab agression in the Middle East has been left empty as the result of an international (mostly American) prohibition on its use. They have been gnawing that angry leather idly for many years, one might even say for decades. Finally, as if in answer to their prayers, that boot is now filled with the force of a potent phantom, a non-state entity responsible to none, who has the resources and the will to carry out the most brutal schemes of the most fanatic elements within the several bona-fide Arab states.
Attacking the Great Satan half a world away was a stroke of self-promotional genius by bin Laden. He proved to the Arab states, especially to their fanatic elements in their Intelligence and Military communities, that he was capable and competent. He capably pulled-off the boldest incursion ever into the sovereign land of the world's biggest superpower. And he proved his competency by executing this grand horror without losing any of his cover. I submit that what connections we have discovered between bin Laden and the dead mass-murders, he has intended to reveal to us. He wants us to attack.
While he is baiting us to attack, he is dangling before the noses of those fevered hate-filled Arab fanatics an irrestible dainty: Isreal. When the Great Satan superpower attacks the impoverished Afghanistan, bin Laden will have accomplished what he set into motion on my birthday, September 11, 2001 -- justification for the Arab world to retaliate against the United States. And since the Arab states with nuclear capability have no launch vehicles capable of reaching the United States, they will retaliate by striking Isreal who they hate even more than the United States. This is why I oppose a military retaliation against bin Laden, the Taliban, or Afghanistan.
He is revolting, an ugly and disgusting soul who seeks nothing good for anyone, yet claims holiness. He very effectively is gaining power for the sole purpose of feeding his insatiable pride in the same way Popes and nations have been doing it for centuries; by claiming to serve God. I would like nothing more than for a cruise missle to flick him like a snot from the face of the earth, but I don't think we would get him, and besides, that's exactly the attempt he wants us to make. Everything he wants we must oppose. Osama bin Laden is the closest that humankind has ever come to the Anti-Christ; he may yet prove to be.