Interview with Osama bin Laden in May 1998.
Describe the situation when your men took down the American forces in Somalia.
After our victory in Afghanistan and the defeat of the oppressors who had killed millions of Muslims, the legend about the invincibility of the superpowers vanished. Our boys no longer viewed America as a superpower. So, when they left Afghanistan, they went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war. They had thought that the Americans were like the Russians, so they trained and prepared. They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier. America had entered with 30,000 soldiers in addition to thousands of soldiers from different countries in the world. ... As I said, our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled, and America had to stop all its bragging and all that noise it was making in the press after the Gulf War in which it destroyed the infrastructure and the milk and dairy industry that was vital for the infants and the children and the civilians and blew up dams which were necessary for the crops people grew to feed their families. Proud of this destruction, America assumed the titles of world leader and master of the new world order. After a few blows, it forgot all about those titles and rushed out of Somalia in shame and disgrace, dragging the bodies of its soldiers. America stopped calling itself world leader and master of the new world order, and its politicians realized that those titles were too big for them and that they were unworthy of them. I was in Sudan when this happened. I was very happy to learn of that great defeat that America suffered, so was every Muslim. ...
Somalia: Humanitarian Success And Political/Military Failure
One month later, on October 3 and 4, a U.S. Army Ranger mission to capture Aidid ended in disaster with 18 U.S. servicemen dead and 77 wounded. After meeting with his top advisors, the president agreed to a new U.S. strategy to "reinforce the troops, shift from a get-Aidid policy to a more political approach and set a hard deadline for withdrawal."22 Within a week, President Clinton established a March 31, 1994 deadline for withdrawal of all American forces. Other major coalition partners soon followed in announcing their withdrawal from Somalia. For all intents and purposes, Operation Restore Hope was over.
Where was the criticism supposed to be coming from?