WI: A west friendly Bin Laden?

[Tyr]

The news today is obviously going on about old Osama a lot. One thing which keeps popping up is his history, how he started off on the path he is on in response to the dodgy regimes ruling the Arab world.
WI....Instead of latching onto Islamic extremism and anti-west rhetoric he instead becomes a proponent of democracy in the muslim world. He would still see the west's support of Arab dictators as a bad, obviously, but perhaps he doesn't see them as the prime enemy, sees this support as being for what it is, purely an alliance of convenience.
WI this Bin Laden with all the resources available to him instead tries to ferment democratic trouble in the Arab world. i.e. along the lines of the current uprisings.

 

[The Red]

Well he was west friendly in the eighties, maybe he becomes something of a figure head in fighting the Soviets somehow and that makes the Americans pay more attantion to him and make him their sort-of ambassador to the radical islamist groups? That's probably ASB though.

 

[Lost the game]

ASB. Thank God that whore-child is rotting in hell now.

 

[Snowstalker]

Not ASB if the US actually helps rebuild Afghanistan being that we supplied the rebels with weapons.

 

[Cuāuhtemōc]

Maybe if we spent more money on building schools, roads, ie basic infastructure to improve the lives of Afghanistan instead of more Stingers then maybe it would've caused a change though it's not likely. Who knows? Not everyone that the US funded went to Al Qaeda and the Taliban; there was the Northern Alliance.

 

[Tyr]

I don't see how its ASB. Rich kid latches onto one ideology over another. Just have his schooling go a bit different but still have him see the same injustices.

 

[RookieHistorian]

Well, one possible way could be to not have American soldiers touch down in Saudi Arabia. I believe the idea of Americans on holy muslim land is one of the things that set Osama off on his Jihad.

 

[Slacker]

Not all that ASB, really. Charlie Wilson's War ends a little differently, Congress gives Afghanistan the money they need to rebuild after they kick the Soviets out.

 

[Wendell]

People in this thread are making the unwarranted assertion that OBL was not already sold on his ideology by the late 1980's. I'm not sure that there's evidence which warrants that assumption.

 

[wolf_brother]

Well, one possible way could be to not have American soldiers touch down in Saudi Arabia. I believe the idea of Americans on holy muslim land is one of the things that set Osama off on his Jihad.

Or had left after Desert Storm and the end of the threat of Iraqi invasion.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Maybe if we spent more money on building schools, roads, ie basic infastructure to improve the lives of Afghanistan instead of more Stingers then maybe it would've caused a change though it's not likely. Who knows? Not everyone that the US funded went to Al Qaeda and the Taliban; there was the Northern Alliance.

I don't think the U.S. kept supplying the Stingers after the war ended and sending development aid instead of arms during the war means that the Soviets would destroy whatever the Muj developed.

BTW, in "Soldiers of God," Kaplan described how the presence of the Stingers deterred Soviet attacks in certain areas and allowed displaced people to return and resume farming.

Thanks for the backup on the Northern Alliance though.

 

[Caesar Australis]

Well if the Soviet Union had somehow managed to survive and sustain it's Afghan campaign he'd still be west aligned. But he had three big beefs with the West:
1)Israel
2)Forces in Arabia
3)Screwing Iraq in between the second and third gulf war.

1)Can't really be circumvented, unless we have Israel defeated and destroyed by one of the Arab invasions.
2)Can't really be dealt with, but he won't care if the Soviets are still extant in Afghanistan.
3) The invasion by America probably wouldn't have happened if the SU was still around.

 

[HeavyWeaponsGuy]

Maybe if we spent more money on building schools, roads, ie basic infastructure to improve the lives of Afghanistan instead of more Stingers then maybe it would've caused a change though it's not likely. Who knows? Not everyone that the US funded went to Al Qaeda and the Taliban; there was the Northern Alliance.

Well the time the US was buying stingers it was a little counterproductive to invest in infrastructure and schools given that Afghanistan is still fighting the Soviet occupation.

That said, I believe not building Afghanistan as a country was an enormous mistake on our part.

 

[wolf_brother]

bin Laden had no problem with throwing Saddam under the bus. In fact when the conflict over Kuwait first began bin Laden offered the Saudi royals to protect the Arabian-Iraqi border from potential Iraqi invasion with his Afghan veterans. It was only after the Saudis turned down this offer and invited the US into Saudi Arabia that bin Laden turned against the West for having American troops in the holy territories in Arabia.

Israel wasn't exactly a top-priority for bin Laden, and even after he took on his Anti-Western stance it was more an issue that Israel acted as an appendage of American foreign policy in the Middle East. However, with that being said, in ATL where US forces aren't stationed in Arabia I could still see bin Laden turn to general anti-Americanism over the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

 

[Xgentis]

People in this thread are making the unwarranted assertion that OBL was not already sold on his ideology by the late 1980's. I'm not sure that there's evidence which warrants that assumption.

Yes I agree have this ideology from the start.

 

[HeavyWeaponsGuy]

Well if the Soviet Union had somehow managed to survive and sustain it's Afghan campaign he'd still be west aligned. But he had three big beefs with the West:
1)Israel
2)Forces in Arabia
3)Screwing Iraq in between the second and third gulf war.

1)Can't really be circumvented, unless we have Israel defeated and destroyed by one of the Arab invasions.
2)Can't really be dealt with, but he won't care if the Soviets are still extant in Afghanistan.
3) The invasion by America probably wouldn't have happened if the SU was still around.

And destroying Israel would so change the Mideast as to have Bin Laden's current person butterflied away. I mean... that would be huge, I think it's crazy to assume that there would still be the exact same Osama Bin Laden in such a timeline, a parallel of him maybe, but not the same Bin Laden.

That's what irks me a bit in alternate history, you change certain events that make gigantic butterflies but FDR still runs in 1933, Lincoln still gets assassinated etc.

 

[Caesar Australis]

And destroying Israel would so change the Mideast as to have Bin Laden's current person butterflied away. I mean... that would be huge, I think it's crazy to assume that there would still be the exact same Osama Bin Laden in such a timeline, a parallel of him maybe, but not the same Bin Laden.

That's what irks me a bit in alternate history, you change certain events that make gigantic butterflies but FDR still runs in 1933, Lincoln still gets assassinated etc.

Well their were several wars between Arabs and Israel. If it was one of the earlier ones you're certainly right, but if it's later on, like the Yom Kippur war in 1973(when Bin Laden was 16)... well you're probably right that it would severely impact his later development. I thought he was about a decade older then he turns out to have been, jihadism really sped up his physical aging.

 

[HeavyWeaponsGuy]

But one of the earlier ones may well affect the fortunes or the lives of the Bin Laden family... so going even further than him.

 

[Wendell]

Yes I agree have this ideology from the start.

If OBL is pro-West from the get-go, then he'll likely live the life of a playboy architect living in Dubai.

 

[Mikey]

I think a lot of the easiest scenarios have to focus on a stronger Soviet presence in the Middle East in the 80s, leading to Bin Laden's primary goals being anti-Communist instead of ant-Western. I don't think he'll ever be a personal friend of the US or Western states, but he could remain a valuable ally for decades.

Perhaps a leftist victory in the Iranian Revolution, rather than the Islamist result in OTL, could lead to Soviet success in Afghanistan, and thus, an al-Qaeda focused on destroying the USSR instead of the United States.

This result probably also would push Saddam ever closer to the United States, meaning that the US would not deploy to Saudi Arabia, relieving Bin Laden of one of his major griefs with the west.

I'm not sure how plausible the premise is, though.