Ghazi Algosaibi: Osama bin Laden should not be dignified by justification

From a speech at Westminster University by the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the UK

I must start by frankly admitting that Saudi Arabia has always been an efficient factory for the production of myths. The reasons are not difficult to comprehend. The name "Arabia" is itself a myth-maker. The mere mention evokes all kinds of magical scenes, the noble Bedouin, the folding tents, the exploits of Lawrence, the legendary wealth, the crazy hospitality and a hundred other things. Many Westerners will throw in Arabian Nights, complete with flying carpets and the intrepid Sinbad, unaware that Baghdad is not part of the peninsula. So to an extent, there will be no total escape from myths. As a poet, I find this delightful. As a diplomat, I find this most frustrating.

One myth is that al-Qa'ida is a Saudi creation. In fact al-Qa'ida is the creation of a deranged terrorist: Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden was himself a creation of the war in Afghanistan. By all accounts, he was a shy, polite, withdrawn young man when he went to Pakistan to help raise funds for the mujahedin in the early Eighties. By the early Nineties, the shy young man had turned into the world's most dangerous terrorist. His role in the actual fighting is still disputed, but what is certain is that he emerged from the mountains, convinced that he, helped by a small group of fighters, brought the Soviet Union to its knees, and to its final collapse.

Listening to him, in some of his rambling interviews, I had the impression of a madman who thought he had defeated one superpower and was about to defeat the remaining superpower. I am not a psychologist, but both his words and actions reveal a man with dangerous illusions of grandeur. He is not interested in redressing Palestinian injustices or in getting the Americans out of the Gulf, although he finds it convenient to mention those two issues. What he wants is the destruction of America itself. I refuse to dignify his actions with any justification; he kills because he enjoys killing. To compare him with Yasser Arafat is an act of folly only Ariel Sharon can muster.