Thank You, Mr. President

So you finally found me. Thank you, Mr.President. Thank you so much. It was time for me to go. I just needed to do it in the right way. I needed to do it in style. And you helped me to achieve that. Two bullets to the brain, administered by the army of the infidel. What more could a mere servant of Allah ask for? I am happy now. Allahu akbar...

God knows – both your God and mine Mr. President – that things had been tough for me. Why he allowed my kidneys to malfunction in the way that he did I will never know, though I suspect it may have been as a punishment for some of the excesses of my youth. I will not go into those here, for why should I give succour to the enemies of Islam who might point to them and say: ‘What a hypocrite!’ But I was no more a hypocrite than you Mr. President of the United States of America. I, after all, never preached peace and love! Or equality! Not that it matters. Individuals don’t count. You might not have realised that, Mr. American President, but it is true. What is that old hippy song? You know the one. “We are stardust,” it goes. “We are golden. And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” It is all God’s plan. Or as the Irish like to say: ‘Our day will come!’
I liked that song when I heard it first and I still do. I know it was naïve. I know it was written by a foolish, blond, sexually promiscuous Western girl from Canada. But I’ll be honest: I couldn’t help myself liking some of that music when I was younger. The Doors! Rama lama! If I had been born twenty years earlier, I might even have been a guru to some of these rock stars. Imagine what we might have achieved then! But, to be serious for a minute, there was a time when I felt that there might have been something in it. ‘Woodstock’. That song haunted me. I’ll never forget the words, I really won’t. “And I dreamed I saw the bombers/ Riding shotgun in the sky/ And they were turning into butterflies/ Above our nation.”
What a lovely image that is. And what a pity that it didn’t happen that way, Mr. President. We’d all have been saved immeasurable grief. You and I both have done things that we regretted. I know that. You know it too. I sent those planes to America to show your predecessor, that despicable little runt George W. Bush, what it was like having terror rain down from the skies. Of course, our young men were in paradise from the moment the planes smashed into the Twin Towers. I am happy for them. But it would be a lie to say that I felt good about all of that in the long run. I have had bad dreams Mr. President. Bodies falling from the sky. People on fire. All around me rage and grief. And then me falling from the sky. Into the abyss. I’d waken up in a cold sweat, wishing that it had been for real, wishing that I had perished too. You must have that dream sometimes, Mr. President. Come on, I know you do.
Now at least my time for having nightmares is over. You will go on doing the same things. Making the same mistakes. Killing innocent people. Prosecuting wars that have no justification. I am not sure I even blame you. I did what I thought I had to do, Mr.President. You do what you think you have to do. But look where it got me. Lonely, isolated and depressed. Apart from my four wives of course. Forgive me if I smile, as I write this, but I am free now. Finally I am free.
It hasn’t been pleasant you know. Living in the mountains was the worst. Where I come from I knew my souffle from my sufi. Instead I was eating chickpeas from a tin. Warmed up industrial dhal. Stewed goat if I was lucky. Sleeping on the ground – not good for a man with a lousy kidney. Your hitmen nearly got me in Tora Bora. I just about got out with my ass intact. Oh, I’m not as good with a machine gun as I used to be – though to be honest that was all a bit of hype about me battling the Russkies in Afghanistan. Not that I was as big a fraud as the creep Bush! I ended up on the battlefield alright and fired off some rounds and hit a few rocks but I was always better at getting the other guys to do the work. But in Tora Bora I had to use a gun and it felt good. Your guys fucked up, you know. We showed we were smarter, sharper, braver. Bye bye American pie. See you later alligator. What is that great phrase you Americans use? “I’m outta here.” We laughed about that one when we made it across the border...
But after that it was all downhill. The Pakistan authorities were very helpful but worse than no good to us. It was like being on the North Pole. No phone. No internet. No way of communicating. How the hell do you think I was going to act as commander-in-chief to anyone? The courier was my only way. But that was no fun, doing tapes and waiting to see if he’d make it through with them. Looking at the TV to find out would they even be quoted. Chasing headlines! And which of our cells was going to take instruction from me anyway? A cripple. In hiding. Who couldn’t ever have his own Facebook page.
I don’t mind telling you that I had started to feel pretty shit. The realisation crept up on me: I was irrelevant. Out of touch. An old laggard. Holed up in a ridiculous palace in bloody Abbottabad of all places. With 12 foot thick walls. And no phone. Alright, I was well taken care of for food and other essentials – you know what I’m talking about Mr.President – but it was a nothing existence. Boring. Horrible. There’s another American word I like: naff.
I was able to watch TV, but that only made it worse. I saw the changes that were sweeping through places that we might have thought of as our own. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria. All suddenly erupting in protest against the guys that I hated. Mubarack. Ben Ali. Your puppets Mr. President. Your stooges. Oh, if only I could have been there, where I was needed. On the ground. When I was needed. Think of what we might have achieved. Instead I was stuck in no-man’s land, as useless as a spent condom.
Apologies Mr. President. I don’t mean to make fun of American values at a time like this – but I’m sure you know what I mean. It galled me all the same. Facebook! Did anyone ever hear of anything more obscene? Women’s faces being exposed in all their holiness for the world to see, letting heathen men ogle them as if sin didn’t exist. People advertising their every little move. For a man who couldn’t even step outside his own front door, well, it was all a bit too much. And then they started to rise up, these young Islamic people. And guess what? I could see it straight away: they were tools of alien influences, stooges of the west. I wanted to roll myself up into a little ball and die.
Which was where you came in, Mr. President. Of course my courier knew that he was being followed. And so once we had made a decision it was easy. He could lead you to me. I knew, of course, that you were going to kill me anyway. I saw Apocalypse Now back in the day, Mr. President. I remember the phrase. I liked it then and I still do. “Exterminate with extreme prejudice.” Beautiful, Mr. President. Poetry, if you don’t mind my saying so.
I knew what my fate was, but I thought we’d make it a bit easier for you. Put up a little fight. But the gun to my head felt good. Bliss it was to be alive at that moment! Bang. Bang. You shot me down! Bang. Bang. I hit the ground.
I am far more useful to the cause dead than alive, Mr. President. There was nothing constructive that I could do anymore. I had nothing left to contribute.
But now? Now I am a martyr. I am a rallying point. I will instigate more mayhem, more destruction, more death, more suffering, more grief, to you and to yours, dead than I ever could have alive. Revenge will be sweet.
How good of you to have arranged it so. Obama kills Osama! Posterity will not forget that! You think now that your name is written into the history books for all the right reasons. Barack Obama: the man who finally avenged 9/11! But when they come to look back on this in 100 years time, I’m not so sure that they will see it that way.
In killing me you have given new energy and impetus to a cause that was in danger of perishing. We had lost our way. Now, the jihad will gather fresh momentum. My brothers will go about imposing their will on the world with renewed purpose and vigour. Inshallah. Even more than me, even more that Osama Bin Laden, you are our saviour, Mr. President.
I thank you, and salute you.
Yours sincerely,
Osama Bin Laden,
May 2011.