> Subj: NYTimes.com Article: Bush to bin Laden 
> Date: 10/12/2001 10:39:35 AM Eastern Daylight Time 
> > 
> Bush to bin Laden 
> 
> October 12, 2001 
> 
> By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN 
> 
> The White House has asked U.S. networks to limit broadcasts 
> of statements by Osama bin Laden. I wish that instead of 
> censorship, the president would respond to him. Here's what 
> Mr. Bush could say: 
> 
> Dear bin Laden: I've listened to the statement you released 
> through Al Jazeera TV. Since I know that no Arab or Muslim 
> leader will dare answer you, I thought I would do it. Let 
> me be blunt: Your statement was pathetic. It's obvious from 
> what you said that you don't have a clue why we're so 
> strong or why the Arab regimes you despise are so weak. 
> 
> You spoke about the suicide attacks on us as being just 
> revenge for the "80 years of humiliation and disgrace" the 
> Islamic nation has gone through. You referred to the 
> hijackers as a Muslim vanguard sent "to destroy America," 
> the leader of the "international infidels," and you 
> denounced the Arab regimes as "hypocrites" and "hereditary 
> rulers." 
> 
> What was most revealing, though, was what you didn't say: 
> You offered no vision of the future. This was probably your 
> last will and testament - I sure hope so - and you could 
> have said anything you wanted to future generations. After 
> all, it was your mike. Yet you had nothing to say. Your 
> only message to the Muslim world was whom to hate, not what 
> to build - let alone how. 
> 
> In part it's because you really don't know much about 
> Islamic history. The Muslim world reached the zenith of its 
> influence in the Middle Ages - when it preserved the best 
> of classical Greek and Roman teachings, and inspired 
> breakthroughs in mathematics, science, medicine and 
> philosophy. That is also when Islam was at its most open to 
> the world, when it enriched, and was enriched by, the 
> Christian, Greek and Jewish communities in its midst - whom 
> you now disparage as infidels - and when it was actively 
> trading with all corners of the world. Your closed, inward, 
> hate-filled version of Islam - which treats women as cattle 
> and all non-Muslims as enemies - corresponds with no period 
> of greatness for Islam, and will bring none. 
> 
> It was also revealing that the only Arab state you 
> mentioned was Iraq. Interesting - Iraq is led by a fascist 
> dictator, Saddam Hussein, who used poison gas against his 
> own people, who squandered Iraq's oil wealth to build 
> himself palaces and who raped Kuwait. But you are silent 
> about all that. What bothers you is our targeted sanctions 
> to end such a regime - not the regime itself. 
> 
> In other words, you not only don't understand the Muslim 
> past, you don't understand its present. The reason these 
> past 80 years have been so stagnant for the Arab-Muslim 
> world is not because we in America have been trying to keep 
> you down. Actualy, we haven't been thinking about you much 
> at all. No, the difference between American power, Chinese 
> power, Latin American power and Arab-Muslim power today is 
> what we've each been doing for these past 80 years. We and 
> others have been trying to answer many questions: How do we 
> best educate our kids? How do we increase our trade? How do 
> we build an industrial base? How do we increase political 
> participation? And we judged our leaders on how well they 
> answered all those questions. 
> 
> But people like you want Arabs and Muslims to ask only one 
> question of their leaders: How well did you fight the 
> infidels and Israelis? I know that who rules Jerusalem is a 
> deeply important part of your heritage, and every 
> Arab-Muslim leader must address it. But it can't be the 
> only question. Yet, because people like you have reduced it 
> to the only question, and tried to intimidate every Arab 
> who wanted to ask other questions, you have allowed your 
> region to be led by scoundrels, like Saddam. 
> 
> Yes, you've wreaked some havoc, bin Laden, but don't 
> flatter yourself into thinking you can destroy us. You have 
> to build something strong to destroy something strong. But 
> you can't. Because all the intellectual and creative 
> energies in the Arab-Muslim world - which are as bountiful 
> as in any other region - can never reach their full 
> potential under repressive regimes like Iraq or leaders 
> like yourself. 
> 
> Stalin and Mao killed a lot of their own people, but even 
> these thugs had a plan for their societies. You, bin Laden, 
> are nothing but a hijacker - a hijacker of Islam, a 
> hijacker of other people's technology, a hijacker of a vast 
> Arab nation's anger at its own regimes. But you have no 
> vision and no plan for your people. Which is why your 
> epitaph will be easy to write: 
> 
> Osama bin Laden - he destroyed much, he built nothing. His 
> lasting impact was like a footprint in the desert.