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Additional reporting here, here, and here. See also, Stop the ACLU, Conservababes, Gameshout, Opinion Bug, Jawa Report, Michelle Malkin (who will doubtless round up reaction), and the Counterterrorism Blog’s Walid Phares, who writes:
The new Zawahiri videotape released by al Jazeera today shows a sophistication in the propaganda war waged by the Jihadists worldwide against the US and its allies. Designed to “crumble” the morale of the American public and “boost” the commitments of the Jihadi forces, the tape is another attempt to score points in the War of ideas and media. The results were immediate in the West. The Associated Press immediate leads were stunning: 1) Zawahiri proves he wasn’t killed by the US strike, therefore he scored one point against the US. 2) He labeled his enemy, the US President, as “butcher of Washington,” hence attempting to rally the widest anti-American axis as possible AP lead. But the tape is not just that, another message from the number two in al Qaida. It is a very well orchestrated political offensive aimed at the nervous centers of the “enemy’s public. A shot that may preceed action or asking for it.
Personally, I think Dr Phares overstates things a bit with respect to US opinion and the tape’s propaganda value. One of the benefits of an hysterical, adversarial, and sensationalist media is that, blessedly, its inevitable and predictable insistance on the implied importance of every al Qaeda missive as a nail in the US imperialist’s coffin is viewed by most in the US as simply that—a way to gin up fear and ratings—although sadly, this speaks less to the media’s continued importance in framing stories from their position of advocacy than it does to the length of time between attacks proving tentatively dispositive to our successes, and the sense Americans have that, regardless of how the AP spins it, a man bragging that an unmanned airstrike narrowly missed him (while killing other terror leaders) is a bit like Randall Tex Cobb bragging that he’d never been knocked out, even while he lost fight after fight.
The result is a cult figure—who in the meantime either lands a plum role in a Coen Brothers movie, or else tries to buoy the flagging spirits of an increasingly decimated al Qaeda organization (whose finances and communications are serious compromised, in the latter case, attempts by civil libertarians to reverse the trend notwithstanding) by bluster and the kind of puerile insults (“Bush is a ‘failure’”) one expects to come from a nerdy Senate minority leader, not a terror mastermind.
Neither seem fairly effective long-term war strategies, if you ask me.
Whether or not the release of the tape is intended as a trigger, of course, is another question—one that I hope we’ll know about beforehand, even if it means “bullying” US telecom companies into using their switches, or taking advantage of the kind of pen registries routinely used in billing and law enforcement.
(h/t Kyle, et al)
Did he give a point spread on the game?
(Personally I’ll take the Coalition by 13 1/2…and the Seahawks by 4)
I was telling a friend just the other day, when Dick Cheney comes crawling out of a cave in the mountains, making cheap video tapes bragging about how AQ hasn’t killed him yet, then I might start believing we are winning this thing.
Well, as Leonard Smalls might say: “You want to find a terrorist outlaw, send in the special forces. You want to find a Dunkin’ Donuts, call a cop.”
Black background?
If the whole tape is as clear and clean as that image, it could be fun keying him into interesting places. Gay pron, Democrat rallies, peering over the shoulder of Mother Sheehan…
(He shoulda used a chroma green background, but I guess you can’t have EVERYTHING.)
“When in doubt, run off tackle. Especially if the tackle is the infidel Walter Jones.”
I hear Mikey Moore bought rights to Forrest Gump…
Zawahiri is a Jets fan.
Especially when they smash into office buildings.
In other words: Pay no attention to the continued existence and freedom of Al Qaeda more than four years after they killed 3000 odd Americans. So what if Zawahiri and Bin Laden die of old age before we catch them, they will die, oh yes, they will.
Did you see that Zawahiri has Mursi’s number on the back of his towel-met?
Win one for the Midhatter.
Do you have a point, Retief?
“But just don’t eavesdrop on my chinese takeout orders,” right Retief?
Your understanding of the War on Terror is thifsar from total ignorance.
Or would you rather we invade Pakistan? Idiot.
Maybe you should stick to “five-eyed sticky fingers”, Jamie.
That, or go shoot the mook yerself.
If you can find him in his Isalamabad hideout.
Goddam!! Retief!!
Not only was that authentic liberal gibberish, you also besmirch one of the best swings in golf every time you comment.
Mercifully, you will die someday as well.
Does Dr. Z get his talking points beamed from Deaniac HQ directly into his tinfoil towel wrap?
Steelers by 6.
Do you really think he is talking to you, Jeff?
He is speaking arabic. It sounds humorous and preposterous to us in translation, but he is not just talking to the dar al-harb, but more to the dar al-islam.
He is talking to muslims.
He might sound like World Federation wrestling to us, but that is cultural.
He sounds different to the ummah.
i am not a multiculturist. I’m a pragmatist.
Don’t underestimate your enemy.
Nishizono —
Thanks for the warning. I’m NOTORIOUS for not taking al Qaeda seriously.
From now on? I’ll run my “analysis” through the filter of al Qaeda’s unlikelihood of making a rhetorical misstep.
Which of course means, UBL showing up in advance of the ‘04 elections was indeed the brilliant gambit to get Bush elected and bring about end times through a clash of civilizations world war that many in the James Walcott camp tried to make it out to be.
Incidentally, I noted that he was attempting to rally the troops. Which, to flip your argument, doesn’t mean he can’t sound preposterous to us and still sound serious to Muslims. The two are not mutually exclusive.
“In other words: Pay no attention to the continued existence and freedom of Al Qaeda more than four years after they killed 3000 odd Americans. So what if Zawahiri and Bin Laden die of old age before we catch them, they will die, oh yes, they will.”
No virgins for dying on a sleeping mat in a cave, though. Turning Bin Laden & co. into impotent troglodytes may be a better tactical move than turning them into dead Martyrs if the long-term goal is to discredit their movement. Strong horse vs. weak horse and all that.
Damn straight. I want them both to live forever (so they don’t get Paradise), all the while as irrelevant as a Romanov.
Regards,
Ric
tw: million. The sentence is a million years of being ignored.
Jeez, Nishizono-san, you ruined it. I thought he was talking directly to me. I swear he made eye contact with me at one point. I heard that Dionne Warwick song playing in my head.
I’ll have to file this one away, Ric. Collecting the residuals may be tough, however, as I am legally incorporated in a shanty just outside Chengdu, China.
Either to satisfy Islamic law, or because certain respected Islamic scholars have stated so, attacking one’s enemy is unacceptable UNLESS the attack is preceded by a warning or offer for peaceful resolution (usually in a form that the enemy would never accept). If the warning / offer is rejected, the attack may proceed. Hence my interest in OBL and his sidekick making these recent pronouncements.
I know they sound typically goofy to us, having become characatures over time, but I take them seriously enough still to wonder what’s next.
I think the biggest clue as to how ham-handed (heh) the Islamists are in regards to Western ears was the appearance of Sesame Street’s Bert on posters and signs after 9/11.
So, yeah, it’s possible he meant to be talking to us.
umm…that’s what i said. we’re the dar al-harb, the world of war. He is speaking to the dar al-islam, the world of submission, or the “muslim masses”? I bet that is what he said, but it wasn’t translated like that. he doesn’t really care how he sounds to us.
or he would speak english–UBL has done that a time or too. those guys can speak english just fine. UBL spoke english when he thought to influence the elections–but he was mislead into thinking he could do that by the left.
i didn’t mean that you aren’t serious about al-Qaeda.
Kelly, my point is “smoking them out of their holes” and “hunting them down”. When are we going to get around to that? He can run but not hide, unless by hide you mean escape capture or killing for four years.
Wishbone, Why would we need to invade Pakistan when they are an ally? Are suggesting that it is too hard for the US to kill or capture Bin laden and Zawahiri? Because they’re in Pakistan? Is that an indication of Bush’s seriousness about the War against them?
alppuccino, As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
Mojo, I see him more as a Yill.
Scott Free, Sure but if we had started this war with “we’ll chase them to their caves, and then we’ll leave them there,” that might sound less like a consolation prize.
It is Nishizono-chan, Maybee.
Y’know, I’d take liberals like Retief more seriously if they’d hold Clinton even *somewhat* responsible for losing him in the first place. Or for running away like a coward instead of standing up to Al Qaida when the bombed us the first…what, 7 times?
Gimme a break, lib.
DP
dogtown,
formal tribal warfare among the bedouin always started with a “boast”. The bedouin were revered as the model for for Islamic culture. Mohammed was sent to live among them as a youth.
Much of bedouin culture permeates the holy Qu’ran.
Detroit Patriotette, were you busy supporting an intervention in Afghanistan during the Clinton years? ‘Cuz I didn’t notice any groundswell of support for that among conservatives.
Do I have to bring out the long post on the British experience in the NorthWestern
Frontier, excluding the Bajur Agency; which
lasted 100 years; from the 1st Afghan war,
where the Brits lost 10,000 to 40,000 in one
battle; the retreat from Kabul, through the
Sikh Wars, the confrontation at Buna Pass,
The Second Afghan War; which had fewer causalties
but more import; Malakand, where young Churchill and future Mesopotamian head honcho Aylmer Haldane, headed off another Mad Mullah, separate
from the Mahdi’s army in Sudan the following year
at Omdurman, almost a hundred years to the day,
of the “Monica testimonial strike” on the Baby
Milk Factory, the 3rd Afghan war, fought almost
entirely in Waziristan, or the myriad other campaigns that led up to the Fakir in the mid 30s
and 40s, who died in peace in 1961. Do I have to
go there.
Manga?
Ie, MayBee – Miike, not Manga.
To me the Zawahiri tape is an annoying distraction in our culture war. The MSM, it seems, brings it up to take the heat off themselves. The most interesting part about it is how much it resembles Democrat talking points.
Retief,
Playing whack-a-mole is fun, but only when you can stop when the quarters run out.
Under present circumstances, killing Zarqawi, Zarahiri, bin Laden, et. al. would be personally satisfying but useless from any long-range perspective. Another equivalent would spring up more or less immediately.
The objective is to eliminate or reduce the conditions that produce Zs and bin Ladens. That is the purpose of the effort in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and always was. The tactics of engagement have been shown not to do that, as has the realpolitik you profess to encourage.
If the effort to remake the Middle East succeeds, killing the Islamists won’t be necessary. If it doesn’t, killing Islamists won’t do any good and may do harm. Either way, chasing down and killing Zs is nothing more than satisfying revenge, which is specifically discountenanced by the Christian faith. (Not forbidden. Christianity doesn’t forbid anything. It does say that what you do is evidence of what you are.) George Bush isn’t interested in revenge on anybody for any reason. That doesn’t mean he’s willing to give malefactors a pass. It does mean that tit-for-tat is not among his objectives.
By the way, if you should feel chill around the neck or in the back, it’s merely Keith Laumer’s ghost trying to knife you. I don’t think he’s able to actually do anything, of course.
Regards,
Ric
Creative Commons license. Enjoy.
Regards,
Ric
Yes, but to speak in Arabic provides another layer of otherness that is alien and frightening.
Of course he was talking to us. Yes, he was talking to Muslims (message: I’m alive), but he was talking to us—and rather pointedly—as well. He called Bush a loser (ala Reid) and a butcher (maybe an allusion to Saddam; possibly incidental).
So to answer your initial question: yes, I believe he was talking to us; and no, I don’t underestimate our enemy. Why would you think I do?
Oh, oh I can field that one Jeff! Because of the Inattention!
We need Zawahari… he throws the neatest parties we can crash…
Maybe the cirlcle will close.
What happens to the Left in this country when they try triumphalism in their rhetoric?
I mean, when they stay with the tried and true tinfoil paranoia stuff like “end of civil rights, roll back of women’s ability to control their uteruses (sp?), tax cuts for the rich, etc., etc. what ends up happening?
No further attacks on our soil. Great growth, low unemployment. Judicial appointments of constitutional scholars who will interpet our constitution and law and not legislate from the bench based on political agendas.
And the Left falls further and further behind.
Zawihiri’s got himself a videotape recorder and an audience that wants to believe. Sounds like Chuck Schumer and CNN to me.
Go ahead and mock, Mr. . It’s worked so well for your allies.
TW = “mind”. I wouldn’t mind if Zawihiri ended up worm food, but I’m not particularly worried about it happening any special time.
Fox hunting is now illegal in England.
This is not because foxes are nice fellows, although I’m sure there are ignorant folk who think so. Foxes are vicious predators that parasitize on ground-living birds and other useful species; very difficult to make into heroes.
No. The reason the English were persuaded to make the ancient pursuit illegal is one of pure image. Here we have a couple of dozen people, mounted on thousand-pound horses, bounding across the countryside chasing a twenty-five-pound animal. It looks ridiculous if you know nothing about it, and after several generations of city living the number of people who know anything about it has been reduced to near-nil. Hurrah for the underfox!
The United States could “get” Zawahiri and/or bin Laden, but it would end up looking very much like a fox hunt—hundreds or thousands of heavily-armed and -armored troops bounding across the countryside in roaring, clanking multiton vehicles, sucking up fuel by the barrel and shooting off thousand-dollar artillery rounds, as their quarry darts in and out of holes in the hills popping back with squirrel-guns. A ridiculous spectacle, and keep it in mind when lefties like Retief start piously scolding us for the survival of bin Laden, et. al.
Since they are working (actively or passively) for our defeat, ginning up a fox hunt is right up their alley—plenty of opportunity for sneering at inappropriate use of gear and chortling behind their hands at the impotence of grand force. They don’t want bin Laden caught; they want Americans to be made to look ridiculous, whether bin Laden is caught or not. And if their sneers are enough to enrage us into launching such an effort, fools R us.
The function of the Predator/Hellfire attack was to disrupt the organization, not to get any particular person. We would have been happy to knock Zawahiri out, but half a loaf is better than none, and some disruption did occur—witness the man who loves death bragging that he isn’t. TmjUtah is correct. We’ll get him, or we won’t; if we do, it’ll be because he’s part of the leadership we’re trying to disrupt, not because he’s Zawahiri the Bogeyman.
I would go so far as to suggest that if any Special Forces in the area have any time free and wish to go chasing Qaedin, we should give them supplies, ammunition, etc. for the pursuit. Harmless hobbies that help sharpen needed skills should always be supported. But it’s more useful to undermine The Base than it is to shoot off the statue’s nose with smallarms fire, and wasting time, money, and materiél chasing down individuals is a game for losers.
Regards,
Ric
naruhodo…i have offended you.
why so touchy?
i maintain dar al-islam is the primary audience.
or he would have spoken in english like Usama when he offered the blue states a hudna.
sho, he had a few barbs for the infidel. And he was also showing the west he was alive and unruffled.
But i think it was primarily a recruitment and arab solidarity video. he was also trying to repair the damage in the arab world Zarqawi caused with the Jordanian bombings, and attrition of Iraqi arabs by terrorists.
IMHO.
damn, no comments, everything’s already been said
Dr. Z rallying the Muslim troops with his bluster…
My favorite story about Islamic-warrior bluster is the al Qaeda fighters at Tora Bora who would stand up from behind their rocks and taunt the Americans, and then the Canadian snipers stationed almost a mile away would pick them off one by one.
And the al Qaedies would never learn. Dozens were killed, like prairie dogs.
Picture John Cleese in a turban: “I fart in your general direction, your mother smells of elderberries, your father was a hamster–”
*Kaboom.*
Canadian sniper: “What was he on aboot? Oh well. Next.”
And speaking of the Danes, it was the Danish Jaegerkorpset–a special operations force–that went into the caves at Tora Bora along with SEALs and the German KSK and did hand-to-hand with Muslim terrorists in the pitch darkness. Knives and submachine guns and grenades. Think about that for a minute. They didn’t lose a single man either, so I think Denmark will be all right.
Domo. Wakarimasu.
I am unfamiliar with his work. And I don’t know how to say that in Japanese, because I am a Nihon-go dropout.
Shorter Retief:
“Are we there yet? Are we? Huh? Are we there yet? When are we going to get there?”
All with the implication that no one is trying to find and off these guys when the reports show that we are.
Quit being so impatient.
Retief,
Before anyone gets on the “why ain’t they caught yet?” wagon, just consider how long it took to nab Ted Kaczinski, and he was in the US.
BRD
Or Eric Rudolph, in a much smaller, more populated mountain range.
To be fair, Rudolph was living large near an all-you-can-eat dumptster.
Are you going to eat that parsley?
But Nishizono, OBL’s message was more than a boast, it was an offer to settle differences without violence. Now, even if we reject the offer, which even OBL knew we would do, he can say that Islamic law has been satisfied and that now the infidels can be attacked without consequence from Allah. It is this “offer” that I take notice of in bin Laden’s message, and that gives me pause in wondering what’s to follow, if anything.
I’m telegraphing my amateur knowledge of Islam, of course, so any comments from more you or other knowledgeable sources is welcome.
Why you’ve never bought one of Jeff’s books.
Geez Jeff! That’s not a sentence, it’s a soup!
Yeah, well if you had ever passed out drunk on cheap gin next to one, you would know when you wake up all hung-over and squinty-eyed a big ass green dumpster looks just like a mountain!
Ric Locke,
What makes you think that Bush’s reasons for being in Iraq match yours, and always have? What are the conditions that produce Zs and bin Ladens which are being adressed by the effort in both Afghanistan and Iraq? Isn’t the appearance that one can get away with killing thousands of Americans one of the conditions that whacking these moles would correct? Why are we in a situation where we’re the terroists are devising long term plans?
As to Foxes, there is more than one way to kill them. One can use poisoned baits. One can use a lure and traps of various kinds. One can use a lure and a shotgun. One can use a single hound and a spade. The thousand pound horses and fifty dogs are not actually required. If your contention is that the US armed forces don’t have the skills, training, equipment, and organizaiton to kill these particular foxes in any of these other ways, that’s a matter for you to take up with Mr. Rumsfeld.
BRD & Mikey, In 2001 did you expect these guys to be alive & free in 2006? Would you expect that to be the case if they were a top priority? How about 2011?
Rettie, they could still be alive in 2041 for all I care—as long as their hopes of ever again striking at us were residing in that dumpster Eric Rudolph was dining out of.
Go get a life, will ya?
Shorter McGehee
Ah, the silent bigotry of lowered expectations…
My expectations of you couldn’t possibly be any lower.
Insistence is spelled with an E, not an A.
Maybe this is a hint that you’re not as smart as you think you are, a typical condition of self-righteous people, although exactly the kind of person not likely to take any hints.
That’s one possibility. Another is that I write these posts directly in the little boxes and don’t use a spell check—because I don’t equate intelligence with either access to a dictionary or with the ability to spot when others have misspelled something.
But being blind to self irony is a pretty good indicator. And your lecturing me about my lack of intelligence and self-awareness (even though you don’t know me from a strange pudenda) in advance of suggesting that I’m the kind of person suffering from self-righteousness—well, let’s just say you’re still a few anthologies short of a subspecialty.
Guess what?
I have read your posts every once in a while and have a pretty good idea you are exactly the kind of self-righteous person who (1) is impossible to engage in substantive discussion that might require you to rethink some of your rightist preconceptions, and (2) couldn’t take a hint that you’re not as smart as you think you are.
And guess what #2: the ability to spell words correctly has a pretty high correlation with the kind of intelligence you seem to think you have (which typically wouldn’t require a dictionary to know how to spell the word insistence), but, oh yeah, you can’t take the hint.
Oh. So your defenses for your initial assertions are as follows:
1) “I say you are self-righteous. Your suggestion that you are not is disproved by my insistEnce that you are. That doesn’t make ME self-righteous. It makes me absolutely and undeniable CORRECT IN MY BELIEFS. And there’s a difference. NUANCE. LEARN IT, WINGNUT!”
2) “Spelling words correctly DOES have a ‘pretty high high correlation with the kind of intelligence you seem to think you have’ [note: that bit of presupposition is left undefined and undescribed, making it impossible to factor it into the “argument”] because, well, spelling ‘insistEnce’ correctly just does show that intelligence thingie. I mean, they’ve done studies. Duh!”
About sum it up?
Good. My rejoinder: Leaving aside that I’m absolutely certain that, if pressed, I can find a thousand instances where I’ve spelled “insistence” correctly (elevating me to the status of GENIUS, yes?)—and leaving aside the circular reasoning behind your assertion that my “self-righteousness” is proven by my disinclination to “engage in substantive discussion that might require you to rethink some of your rightist preconceptions” (which, in turn, is conveniently “proven” by my supposed self-righteousness)—the fact remains that I “engage” all the time. Substantively. And fairly. Read the NSA posts I’ve done if you think otherwise.
Now, the point as to whether I am capable of engaging in discussions that force me to think outside my bigoted blind spot of my “rightest proconceptions” will require that you defind that ideological spectrum for me.
For instance, I managed to do so with regard to the Schiavo case, I thought. Ditto the Yates case. My position on ID is fairly off the social con circuit; my posts on Katrina managed to piss off everybody but a few libertarians. And I’m pretty much a free-speech absolutist.
So… what do you mean, “rightest preconceptions,” exactly? Or were you simply engaging in the kind of accusatory, lazy, ad hominem rhetorical move that presents itself as a kind of weary argument, but in fact is all assertion and generality, and hasn’t the least bit to do with a desire to “engage in substantive discussion”?
Because when I was teaching argument and rhetoric at a university out here, I was forced to know both sides of every controversial topic a student chose to research and argue on—to play devil’s advocate, if you will—so to make sure that the engagement was substantive.
Which doesn’t match your description of me at all.
Of course, you have that whole confidence of your own assessent after admittedly limited exposure to my posts / individual spelling error thing to fall back on.
So really, who am I to argue with you about self-righteousness and presumptuousness?
“get a life” is hardly an appropriate rejoinder from one poster her to another poster here.
Hey nine? You better put some ice on that. It’s gonna leave a mark.