THOM HARTMANN'S "INDEPENDENT THINKER" BOOK OF THE MONTH REVIEW
In the Fifth Century BCE, in his "Art Of War," Sun Tzu wrote: "I say: Know your enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are sure to be defeated in every battle."
Osama bin Laden, dead or alive, responsible for 9/11 or not, has become the modern embodiment of the "enemy" of the United States and western civilization in general. To pass up an opportunity to delve into his thought processes and public declarations would be tantamount to the mistake the rest of Europe made in ignoring Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf."
Those who argue against reading bin Laden fail the test of Sun Tzu. For example, an English translation of "Mein Kampf" was first published in the US in 1937, but the US publisher removed nearly all of Hitler's anti-Semitic remarks and promises of future behavior against the Jews. This so alarmed Alan Cranston, then a reporter for UPI and later the US Senator from California, that he had the original German edition - by then a major bestseller in Germany - fully translated into English and published it himself in 1938, along with his own notes pointing out Hitler's rants, so Americans could see what Hitler was truly predicting he would do and why.
Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden
Edited by Bruce Lawrence, translated by James Howarth
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