it's just a hunch...

I say that Osama bin Laden got pissed off at his stockbroker. Or maybe he got mad that a cousin he doesn’t like managed to buy controlling interest in Citigroup. Either way, people always adorn their actions with lofty motives, with idealism and self-righteousness. So, suppose he got a bad tip and when he whined, the broker diss’ed him. When you dis’ a rich Arab, he gets miffed.

Diss’ed and miffed, Osama sought vengeance and cloaked his vengeance with ostensibly righteous indignation ala Mohammed – in other words, he found an authority to justify himself. He recruited some thugs, fed them Mohammed’s visions of glory for killers of the infidel, and sent them to administer his vengeance.

Things in life are usually far simpler than the media and the experts will ever allow you to believe. Given what we all know about stockbrokers, the rich, about business and about terrorism, and especially about human nature, I think this hunch is a reasonable proxy for the facts, such as they might be.

The attacks on the World Trade Center have, I’ll wager, nothing to do with anything more than this: arrogance, money, and wounded pride. Verizon, Ford, Nextel, et al, ought to thank their personal gods that bin Laden didn’t have to deal with their customer service staffs.