Osama bin Laden, if judged by his roots, is the last person one would expect to have orchestrated the September 11 attacks. It is well known that Bin Laden came from the wealthy Bin Laden Construction family, which was worth almost $36 billion. “Some say the Bin Ladens were to Saudi Arabia what the Rockefellers were to the West.” (Landau, 30) After completing high school, bin Laden was known to travel regularly to Beirut and enjoy the nightlife, drinking excessively and flirting with women. By any measure, Bin Laden had everything in his favor. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay. The turmoil of the 1970s in the Middle East, however, would force Bin Laden to confront his own promiscuity and that of other Muslims. After seeing Beirut destroyed, he turned to fundamentalist Islam (as did many of bin Laden's other sons) and began learning from radical teachers. A variety of factors brought his hatred of the West into the equation. These include the United States' support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War and the assassination of his family's beloved King Faisal by an American-educated nephew. The rest, as they say, is history: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban and finally al Qaeda transformed Bin Laden into the leader he was. But what made it different. What tactics or characteristics made Osama bin Laden a natural rebel leader? An obvious characteristic is his business aptitude. Born to an international business tycoon, he was educated and a natural businessman. Many of his leadership decisions stemmed from these skills, which were unusual to say the least for an Islamic extremist. Work Replication: All the Goals of a Traditional Industry-Based Organization.” (Robinson, 190) It was this kind of business acumen idea that combined so well with the idea of ​​a clandestine cell-based network like al Qaeda and made Osama bin Laden the great leader that he was. Let it be known, of course, that by saying that Osama bin Laden was a great leader I do not mean sympathy for a terrible man, but only that I respect his ability as a commander of one of the topics mentioned in the quote above, particularly "standardized training." Bin Laden's establishment of standardized training made a huge difference in a region where battles are largely fought by men with little or no combat training. These fighters (I find "fighter" to be a more appropriate word than "troop" or "soldier" given their lack of training) can be seen in clips from Syria blindly firing PKMs from the hip, killing friendly soldiers with the backblast of their own role-playing games, and generally lacked any kind of coordination. This is what made Al Qaeda different. Bin Laden's insistence on standardized training meant that every al Qaeda fighter spoke the same language (in terms of combat). Compared to the untrained and reckless fighters we see in Syria and Libya, this makes a difference. “Al-Qaeda has amassed over 10,000 pages of written training materials, more than one hundred hours of training videos, and a global network of training camps.” (Venzke, 6) The translated al Qaeda training manual opens with an emblem bearing the words “Military Studies in Jihad Against Tyrants” and includes detailed sections such as “Security Measures That Should Be Observed in Private Transportation” and “Principles of military organization.” Standards as rigorous as these throughout al Qaeda.