Re: bin Laden statement

here's from Debra J. Saunders, SF Chronicle, October 9, 2001:

"for all his bashing of America, Osama bin Laden truly has embraced America's culture of victimhood . . . Consider Sunday's performance.  The poor little rich boy doesn't exactly have a strong complaint about how the West has mistreated him -- or his native Saudi Arabia, for that matter.  What's the worst America did to him?  Send U.S. troops to help defend the Saudis against further aggression by Iraq's Saddam Hussein.  For that he murders American civilians and children?
No doubt OBL is aware that this complaint can't win enough sympathy, so he has sucked in other Muslims' victimhood . . . his personal sob story doesn't play, so he'll borrow some lines from Palestine and Iraq.
bin Laden must hold onto this fiction of his anger having a political cause -- instead of a sick desire to kill "infidels" because they're "infidels" so that Westerners who pride themselves on being understanding can attribute more acceptable rationales for his bloodlust.
He was so cryptic, that many knowledgeable folks still aren't sure what he meant by, "Our nation has been tasting this humiliation and this degradation for more than 80 years."  (He mentioned "80 years" twice.)
What happened 80 years ago?  You would think that if OBL had a real beef here, he would have been explicit about what happened to make him so made.  But he has to be vague, if only because, as Meyrav Wurmser, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at teh Hudson Institute noted, "Eighty years ago, American was not in the region (the Middle East)." 

OBL's choice of the words "humiliation" and "degradation" tells the real story.  For 80 years, the West has been on top.  Better standard of living.  More freedom.  More equality.  This reality does not jive with OBL's view of the natural order of things.  Hitler blamed the Jews for Germany's also-ran status.  Professional victim bin Laden blames America.