Interesting article in "Policy Review", arguing that we (in the U.S., and, broadly, the Western world as a whole) are misunderstanding Osama bin-Laden's motives and behaviour. The article argues that we are mistakenly trying to understand al-Qaeda's actions as pursuing rational, strategic/political goals--"politics by other means"--when actually, they are enacting a mythic fantasy.
In essence (though he doesn't use the word) he says 9/11 was a heroquest.
For us, belief is a purely passive response to evidence presented to us - I form my beliefs about the world for the purpose of understanding the world as it is. But this is radically different from what might be called transformative belief - the secret of fantasy ideology. For here the belief is not passive, but intensely active, and its purpose is not to describe the world, but to change it. It is, in a sense, a deliberate form of make-believe, but one in which the make-believe is not an end in itself, but rather the means of making the make-believe become real. ... To say that Mussolini, for example, *believed* that fascist Italy would revive the Roman Empire does not mean that he made a careful examination of the evidence and then arrived at this conclusion. Rather, what is meant by this is that Mussolini had *the will to believe* that fascist Italy would revive the Roman Empire.
And, of course, these fantasies can be dangerous for everyone else. Fascist Italy conquered Ethiopia not because it had any use for Ethiopia, not because it had a damned bit of use for Ethiopia, but simply because the fantasy required that Italy be a conqueror.
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