Fatwa issued February 23, 1998, “Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders.” The attack on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 shocked observers around the globe. However, these attacks were not unprecedented. A series of bombings in the Middle East and Africa specifically targeting the United States had marred the post-Cold War triumphalism of the 1990s. The intelligence community had long identified Osama bin-Laden with these acts, even if his name was unfamiliar to most Americans before the events of September 11. The anti-western sentiments of Osama bin-Laden owed as much to the Cold War as they did to his Islamic principles. He had opposed the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan up until the end of the Cold War; after 1989, the United States became the target of his wrath. In the fatwa issued in February 1998, bin-Laden condemned the U.S. military presence in the Middle East and urged a jihad against Americans and their allies.