Thomas Hegghammer in The National:
Omar was initially in denial about his father’s responsibility for September 11, but he gradually came to terms with it and began distancing himself publicly from the elder bin Laden. In 2007 he married a British woman 24 years his senior, left Saudi Arabia for Qatar and began seeking political asylum in various European countries. According to Jean Sasson, Omar himself contacted the publisher with the book proposal in 2008. One suspects that the book is partly an attempt by Omar to convince the outside world of his peaceful intentions and to increase his prospects of moving to the West. Omar’s bitterness toward his father shines through in the text, but not to the point of undermining his own credibility.
It is much less clear what motivated Najwa bin Laden, who was still married to Osama when she wrote the book (and still is, as far as we know). Najwa, who has lived in her native Syria since 2001, seems to have been a reluctant participant of this book project. It was allegedly Jean Sasson who suggested she be a co-author, and she only agreed after being persuaded by Omar. Perhaps she is hoping that the book will help dissociate her children from their father’s legacy and make their lives easier.
At any rate, Najwa is considerably less critical than Omar toward Osama; she neither condemns nor supports her husband’s activities. She comes across as a naive, subservient figure with few political opinions of her own. She prefers to talk about family matters and wants to appear as a loyal wife while showing empathy with the victims of her husband’s attacks. Her position is understandable, but annoyingly spineless. Still, her description of events seems sincere. On the whole, the book must be taken seriously as a historical document.
More here.
I'm sad to report that the situation in Haiti is acute and worsening-people are beginning to get even more desperate and frustrated. The leadership of the Government of the U.S. and its partner nations are “forming up” great things that will take shape in a week or so down the road, but they really need to quickly work through the current paralyzing logistical challenges with harder work and innovative and dramatic re-thinking of the fundamentally flawed, incomplete and inadequate “fly mostly into one airport, then organize and deliver a huge majority of critical aid into one central point and fan out from there” train wreck of a strategy that is not reaching the majority of Haitians in time to avoid major conseuences and an unacceptable level of after-event mortality and morbidity. The collective official response should have been completely on-track by today. As usual, many big shots are failing to think selflessly and share their financial, operational resources with smaller but super-effective agencies- acting like they are the only game in town and the smaller agencies are merely a nuisance underfoot that should just be ignored. This attitude is is not helping anyone. Quite frankly, I would have thought some of them would have learned an important lesson from other disasters where some of the same mistakes were made.
Here's the bottom line: If things don't start improving very rapidly, then life and limb-threatening infections and deadly dehydration and unnecessary conflict will likely emerge within the affected population on a scale that has the potential of becoming rampant and widespread, resulting in more death and injury that could still be avoided, though time is fast running out. The current path to giving Haiti the relief it desperately needs is simply taking way too long in developing in order to be a reasonable and defensible short term emergency strategy. Each country should, by now, be realizing that it is very much the correct option would be to stage multiple and overwhelmingly robust and well managed multi-national supply lines and helicopter sorties using locations and bases other than Port Au Prince Airport, particularly from the Dominican Republic through the border near Jumani, D.R. It's 7-10 hours by road (depending on the kind of vehicle and size of the load), but it's a darn good road compared to the roads in the Pakistan earthquake affected areas that I've been traveling on for the past four years. Distributing aid from several points over a more widespread area can reach far more people far more quickly.