The issue to grapple with is what impact the new bin Laden tape will have on the election — both what bin Laden might intend and what unintended consequences it might have. Both campaigns produced dignified resolute responses affirming a commitment to prosecute the War on Terror with maximal effectiveness, but both were scrambling to figure out how to position themselves (Washington Post ) after this bombshell, as was the press (Slate ). Certainly, Daniel Schorr’s analysis this morning on NPR, that (paraphrased) “any mention of Iraq helps Kerry and any mention of the war on terror helps Bush”, is reductionist and pat. (I think it is becoming evident that Schorr, one of my favorite commentators in days of yore, has long passed his prime.) William Rivers Pitt’s reflections at TruthOut grapple with the issues in more detail. Certainly, it appears that bin Laden is alive and, as Pitt observes, “tanned, ready and rested”, in no way on the run. It appears that will reinforce concerns about Bush’s failure to capture him. Pitt, of course, reminds us in this context of Bush’s resurrected March 2002 comment about just not being that concerned about bin Laden anymore. And Pitt argues that the Bush administration must have worried about the impact of the tape, given that the US ambassador to Qatar reportedly tried to prevent al Jazeera from broadcasting it.
Bin Laden tells us that our security depends on not threatening Muslim security, in essence to stop prosecuting the War on Terror. And, as Nicholas Kristof points out in his New York Times op-ed piece today, Bush knows it:
“I often criticize statements by President Bush, so today let me praise some of his real wisdom:
” Oct. 11, 2000: “If we’re an arrogant nation, [foreigners] will resent us. If we’re a humble nation but strong, they’ll welcome us. … We’ve got to be humble.”
It’s a good thing Mr. Bush tried to be humble, or the U.S. would have an approval rating even lower than 5 percent in Jordan, and Osama bin Laden’s approval rating in Pakistan would be higher than 65 percent.”
But is bin Laden really hoping that the American electorate, to whom his message is addressed directly, are receptive and informed people who will understand that they ought to turn Bush out of office to prevent another 9/11? Does he think anyone will actually believe this, in the fear-ridden fall of 2004? In essence, will the voters be more pissed off at Bush or at bin Laden, as Tom Grieve put it in Salon? Will the tape make it easier or harder for those who voted for Bush in 2000 to look back and admit they were wrong? (And don’t forget that this is an American electorate roughly half of which still believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in the WTC attack, that the invasion of Iraq had something to do with al Qaeda and that it has improved their security in the world.)
Or does he hope to sway a segment of the public into the Bush fold by stimulating their jingoistic anger and fear? It has been argued that bin Laden’s aims are facilitated by polarization and having a belllicose, ignorant Bush administration in power. In this vein, William Gibson argues that Bush and bin Laden are symbiotic, and that bin Laden knew full well that the tape would nudge the voters toward the man who “has always proven so wonderously adept at doing everything (ObL)’d most want him to do.”
In fact, could that misadministration’s frantic efforts to suppress the tape be little more than a charade? The embassy in Qatar might have been directed to attempt to prevent the airing of the tape even in the face of certainty it would be useless. It is not reasonable to think we could stop al Jazeera from broadcasting it once it had been received; I doubt al Jazeera gave the US embassy a courtesy call alerting them to the arrival of the tape before the news was in the broader grapevine, and it is not as if we have any special cachet with al Jazeera.
This appears to be bin Laden’s October surprise (BBC ). The pundits are saying (Guardian.UK) that it comes in place of the terrorist attack they expected to disrupt the election process — the threat of which I have thought arises not so much from intelligence about al Qaeda’s plans as the fear-mainpulating agenda of the RNC. Bin Laden may have diminished capacity to mount further massive attacks, and may be resorting to a propaganda battle instead out of necessity. Billmon (welcome back!) agrees with me, calling this “virtual terrorism” on bin Laden’s part, and smarter than an actual attack would have been.
Those who grow frustrated with seemingly outlandish conspiracy theories can stop reading here (although, with the Bush cabal, truth can certainly be stranger than fiction…); I speculate that the bin Laden tape could also be be the rumored October surprise we have been waiting for from the Bush administration as well. Karl Rove told Hannity the other day, asked about an October surprise, that he still has a few tricks up his sleeve. You know it. FBI analysts have assessed the tape as probably genuine and probably recent; should we take this at face value? (If bin Laden, savvy as he is, is aware of continued doubts about whether he is still alive, and interested in establishing that he is, why doesn’t he hold up something like a recent New York Times front page in his tape, by the way?) The tape was reportedly dropped off anonymously at al Jazeera’s Islamabad offices. Isn’t it even remotely possible — — that it is a sophisticated counterfeit planted by the Bush administration themselves? [Is anyone else discussing this possibility on the web? — FmH. Addendum: Yes, he is.] Given the administration’s failure to deliver bin Laden to the voters dead or alive and, indeed, its failure to prevent Bush from being caught in that embarrassing lie about his March ’02 comments, could they be calculating that the next best thing is to use a bin Laden ‘campaign appearance for Kerry’ to tip the remaining undecided’s back into the fold? The conventional wisdom is that the cowboy-in-chief is vulnerable around not having brought bin Laden to ground, but the Bush campaign may actually be ecstatic that he is still out there, or that the public can be convinced that he is.
Whether or not it is a Bush cabal production, as Billmon puts it the tape “allows the GOP to turn every remaining campaign event into a bin Laden hate rally”. After all, the basis of the Republican campaign strategy has come down to manipulating the voters’ fear quotient and little more, and Tom Ridge’s shenanigans with various coloring-book alerts have long since stopped being credible. In the process, the bin Laden tape also serves another Republican purpose by bumping the issue of the missing explosives off the front page. Watch how they spin.
It is also important to realize that bin Laden, in sharing with us that the genesis of the 2001 attack lay as far back as his 1982 thinking, is warning us how longrange his thinking is, no matter how next week’s election and the next four years go. And, while a particular contempt is reserved for Bush, whom he teases for his indecisive paralysis in the classroom after learning of the WTC attack and whom he lumps in with other corrupt regimes (“half of which are governed by the military and the other half of which are governed by the sons of kings and presidents… in both categories, you find many who are characterised by hubris, arrogance, greed, and unlawful acquisition of money”), he warns the American voters that Kerry’s views on security are not that much better. “Your security does not lie in the hands of Kerry, Bush or al-Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands.”
“Republicans have long insinuated, and occasionally asserted, that bin Laden favors Kerry’s election, so it must have come as a relief to Kerry’s campaign that bin Laden ended his denunciation of Bush with a dismissal of the Democrat as well.” (Washington Post)
Whoever wins next week (or whenever the post-campaign litigation is finally settled), bin Laden may be correct that it is up to right-thinking people to reject the misguided and dangerous premises of the permanent WoT®…and the sooner the better for the peace and security of both the US and the entire world.
