Al Qaeda and Obama

Cynthia Tucker:

Just when it seemed the insults hurled at Barack Obama had reached the apex of absurdity, al-Qaida weighs in with a bit of retro name-calling of its own.

In a video released last week, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the top deputy to Osama bin Laden, denounced Obama as a “house Negro” and compared him unfavorably to “honorable black Americans” such as the late Malcolm X, the black nationalist who practiced Islam.

Zawahiri also showed a still photograph of Obama wearing a yarmulke while visiting Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall last summer. The implication was that Obama had become nothing more than a “tool of the Jews.”

(That’s a switch from the claim of some of Obama’s domestic critics, who fear he’s a secret Muslim who’ll hand the keys of the West Wing to bin Laden.)

While it’s a bit irritating to have an atavistic mass murderer presume to dictate appropriate politics for a black American, Zawahiri’s diatribe is good news. In fact, it may be the best news we’ve gotten in the struggle against al-Qaida since the so-called Sunni awakening in Iraq. Zawahiri and his fellow jihadists are clearly worried both about the symbolic power of an Obama presidency and about the smarter strategy against terrorism that Obama has laid out.

The hamfisted tactics favored by George W. Bush, including his ill-fated invasion of Iraq, were a gift to al-Qaida and its recruiting efforts. They allowed bin Laden and Zawahiri to paint the U.S. government as an imperial power bent on a 21st-century crusade against Islam.

However, that’s a more difficult argument to make when the Oval Office is occupied by a black man whose Kenyan grandfather was Muslim and who played with Muslim friends during his childhood years in Indonesia.

“Obama’s election has taken the wind out of al-Qaida’s sails in much of the Islamic world because it demonstrates America’s renewed commitment to multiculturalism, human rights and international law,” former National Security Council staffer Richard Clarke said. “It also proves to many that democracy can work and overcome ethnic, sectarian or racial barriers.”

The president-elect has also promised to restore the nation’s moral authority by returning to its fundamental values, starting with shutting the prison at Guantanamo Bay. That facility was never necessary for national security; the U.S. has prisons on continental soil that can secure dangerous suspects. But the Bush administration wanted an off-shore location where it could employ hideous methods of interrogation and isolation away from the prying eyes of the media and human rights officials.

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This is utter nonsense on stilts.

Al Qaeda has zero interest in multiculturalism. In fact it hates multiculturalism. The only culture al Qaeda believes deserves to exist is its own. It even hates other Muslims who do not accept its weird religious beliefs. To suggest that Obama's multicultural bonafides give al Qaeda any pause is just delusional.

Al Qaeda's problem with Gitmo is that it is keeping their mass murders for Allah out of action and Obama's decision to close it and release some of these mass murders is one that has to cheer al Qaeda, but they certainly don't care about any PR advantage the US might get from closing it. That temporary PR advantage will quickly fade when the released go all Willy Horton on us.

Tucker still has a hamfisted understanding of the strategic significance of Iraq and the defeat we imposed on al Qaeda there. This lack of strategic understanding colors her commentary on the subject. She has bought into the anti war puke spin on the war in Iraq and it blinds her to how much that war has hurt al Qaeda in the Muslim world. Obama seems to share her ignorance on this issue, but hopefully he will bring in some advosers with a greater comprehension of the Iraq's importance.