Who said Bin Laden was a cleric? He was deeply religious and a pan-Islamist; and the fact that he took money and weapons from the US during the Soviet Union’s occupation obviously meant very little in his holy war against the US, no? Again, maybe you should support your claim with evidence, no?
gee, he was a wonderful friend for us back when we were paying him. and then we stopped paying him, and he became not our friend. it must have been his religion that made that happen, right
Never heard the adage: My enemy’s enemy is my friend?
never heard the adage: "when you stop paying your mercenaries, they tend to take it personally?"
No, maybe you should find some evidence to support that claim.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercena... literally foundational to the western canon, my man
Again, how does this prove your claim? There have been mercenaries for centuries, and still, most wars were started because of religion and not by mercenaries loosing their paychecks.
not even the Wars of Religion were started by religion, man. they were started by an emperor who thought he was going to finally centralize the Holy Roman Empire, a full century after Protestantism arose, and only kicked off when he revoked noble titles, and a mercenary wanted to get paid.
fun story, if you go digging. guy has PROFOUND Trump vibes. after the humiliation of a foreign war that we didnt lose but sure as hell didnt win, we gotta turn inward. we gotta clean out the people who dont support the empire like they should. we gotta take their shit and give it to the deserving.
I would argue that most people who lead a nation into war are charismatic populists and nationalists who are mostly deeply religious as well. You have to have a strong set of beliefs to climb your way up the ranks of a party, no?
he's neither. weird micromanaging monarch who thought the reason Grandpa's bid to rule Europe failed was the empire wasnt centralized enough. Wasnt fully wrong, either! its an interesting detail about the rise of Protestantism: it was only made possible because Grandpa had other fish to fry.
and everyone in power was basically fine with it, all the religious oppression was just a minor annoyance, until he fucked with the money, and suddenly everyone who wasnt directly in the pay of the Hapsburgs said "we need to stop this shit NOW."