Tabin, while I was watching Season Three of Three’s Company this
morning, an episode came on in which Stanley admitted to Jack that,
after a brief scare, everything was back to normal because Jack was
no longer acting normal. This zany paradox analogizes very closely
to what’s behind Yglesias’ take on bin Laden and your flabbergasted
response.
Let me explain. The insta-conventional wisdom, spearheaded as
often it is by Matt Drudge, holds bin Laden’s latest missive to be
a particularly scattershot and eccentric rant on topics that seem
almost embarrassingly distant from the jihadist red meat that one
rather wants to expect from the world’s most wanted man. But rather
than getting stupider and stupider, bin Laden, in his taped
messages, actually seems to be getting more
reasonable — a sure sign that his campaign is failing and
his movement is losing effectiveness. Certainly jihadism remains
robust. But bin Laden’s move to repeat common arguments on the left
suggests to me that his other, less broadly popular arguments have
been even more parochial and less inspiring than he’d hoped.
This, incidentally, would count as a particular humiliation for
us if, as people from Rumsfeld to Bacevich have at times suggested,
the Iraq war has greatly increased the spirit and appeal of
jihadism. Imagine how uninspiring bin Laden’s calls to action would
be without the helpful goad of crusaders in Mesopotamia. But that
would make bin Laden’s move to liberal talking points even more
remarkable: all this protracted difficulty in Iraq, and
still the message of jihad isn’t quite
cutting it for bin Laden?
Chris Wallace’s outrageous attack on Ron Paul during the last
debate — asking him, you know, if Paul thought we should take our
‘marching orders’ from al Qaeda — now seems even more ridiculous:
it’s al Qaeda, in the person of bin Laden, who’s taking marching
orders from us. Regardless of how right or wrong is the left on any
number of issues, it’s not just entertaining but also significant
that bin Laden has decided he stands something to gain by dancing
to their tune. Unfortunately for him, he might get Americans to
force a withdrawal from Iraq, but not even an endorsement of
Hillary Clinton would get his own self out from behind the
crosshairs. In another delightful little irony it’s mainly the
left, after all, that can’t shut up about how Bush has failed to kill bin Laden quickly enough.
