Christian Science Monitor:
There is more."Four years after the blessed raids on New York and Washington, we find the people of the West continuing to speculate about their causes and objectives," he says. "We see no acceptable excuse for this continuing uncertainty, especially since the mujahideen have been unambiguous in stating their methodology on justice and the reasons for their armed struggle against the crusaders, and they have not heeded anything."
For some US analysts, the frustration expressed in the most recent tape is more a reflection of the failings of Al Qaeda since the success of their Sept. 11 attacks than of the world's inability to understand their cause.
"Once again this expresses Al Qaeda's complete naivete about the real impact of their actions," says Michael O'Hanlon, a military affairs analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Most terrorist organizations have internal debates about their tactics and appear to adjust them based on results, Mr. O'Hanlon says. But not Al Qaeda.
"If you look at the terrorist groups targeting Israel, you see they debate what targets and means are legitimate, there is some indication of a debate about the ethics of terrorism. But we don't see any of that in Al Qaeda," he says.
Rather, recent statements by Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, suggest that it is the lack of debate in the West about the political aims behind Al Qaeda's terror attacks that seems to be bothering Al Qaeda.
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For O'Hanlon, the expectation that a group can go around the world "targeting innocent people, and then expect those same people to see the rightness of its cause is just absurd thinking." What that suggests to him, is that "Osama bin Laden is not the mastermind of hearts-and-minds warfare that he is often portrayed to be."
Others say the frustration expressed in the tape probably reflects more than anything the reality of an Al Qaeda that is unable, four years after Sept. 11, to mount a terrorist action in the US at will.
"Had the terrorists had any residual ability to strike in the US they would have done it in the wake of Katrina and with the 9/11 anniversary, but all they could do was make a tape," says Ralph Peters, a retired Army intelligence office and terrorism expert.
The real source of frustration for the Al Qaeda leadership, Mr. Peters says, is that "9/11 has backfired horribly on them. What's infuriating them is that they have failed to gain traction in the Muslim regions where they thought they would."
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