The Making of a Villain: Osama bin Laden
Every good story needs a villain to focus the plot around.
The 9/11 plotters needed a villain the audience would react negatively to. Like someone who had already been accused of masterminding terrorist plots previously.
They really needed someone whose culpability in this plot would be plausible and who would be unable to deny it.
Enter Osama bin Laden. Alleged mastermind of United States embassy bombings in Africa in August 1998.
By 2000, bin Laden suffered from kidney disease[i] and needed dialysis.[ii]
He had connections to the CIA. How else could the plotters have anticipated his whereabouts and plan to frame him as the villain?[iii]
With bin Laden’s condition worsening right around the time of the big event, he could not effectively deny his role. Then he died in December 2001[iv], something most of the public never learns.
The plotters carry on as though bin Laden is still a threat. The public responds favorably to “getting” bin Laden.
In the end, his name serves to stir up enough reason to go to war against anyone our nation needs to fight.
[i] http://web.archive.org/web/20010212010328/http://www.cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,172666-412,00.shtml
[ii] http://web.archive.org/web/20011007021426/http://www.saag.org/papers3/paper266.html
[iii] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/01/afghanistan.terrorism
[iv] http://www.foxnews.com/story/2001/12/26/report-bin-laden-already-dead.html
The 9/11 plotters needed a villain the audience would react negatively to. Like someone who had already been accused of masterminding terrorist plots previously.
They really needed someone whose culpability in this plot would be plausible and who would be unable to deny it.
Enter Osama bin Laden. Alleged mastermind of United States embassy bombings in Africa in August 1998.
By 2000, bin Laden suffered from kidney disease[i] and needed dialysis.[ii]
He had connections to the CIA. How else could the plotters have anticipated his whereabouts and plan to frame him as the villain?[iii]
With bin Laden’s condition worsening right around the time of the big event, he could not effectively deny his role. Then he died in December 2001[iv], something most of the public never learns.
The plotters carry on as though bin Laden is still a threat. The public responds favorably to “getting” bin Laden.
In the end, his name serves to stir up enough reason to go to war against anyone our nation needs to fight.
[i] http://web.archive.org/web/20010212010328/http://www.cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,172666-412,00.shtml
[ii] http://web.archive.org/web/20011007021426/http://www.saag.org/papers3/paper266.html
[iii] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/01/afghanistan.terrorism
[iv] http://www.foxnews.com/story/2001/12/26/report-bin-laden-already-dead.html
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