Sep 21, 2021
Although no one in the United
States could have realized it at the time, the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan in late 1979 was
a seminal moment in the life of a young, devout Sunni Muslim whose
father was a billionaire
construction magnate in Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden, then 22, was “deeply upset”
when he heard an “infidel” army attacked Afghanistan, an event that
would turn out to be “the most transformative of his life,
launching him into a full-time job helping the Afghan resistance,”
writes Peter Bergen in his
new biography, The Rise
and Fall of Osama bin Laden. And few in the West noticed when bin Laden, a
decade and a half later, issued his first public declaration of war
against the United States, a vow of holy war repeated in 1997
during a television interview produced by this episode's guest.
The journalist and
al-Qaeda expert Peter Bergen discusses the purpose of his short,
comprehensive biography of al-Qaeda's dead leader: to explain why
and how bin Laden chose to dedicate his life to mass murder. Among
the subjects covered in this episode: Islam at the heart of
al-Qaeda; bin Laden’s battlefield exploits in Afghanistan; the myth
of CIA-bin Laden cooperation; why so few people in the West noticed
him prior to 1998; and his escape from Tora Bora in late
2001.