In the old days he was a smarter than average nutter. He created a terror organisation whose diffused structure made it hard for its enemies to tell whether they were winning against it. But, by the same token, that structure also makes it hard for him to tell whether he’s winning against us. And right now, as that whiney loser cassette tape suggests, they’re the ones who could use a victory. Osama bin Laden is, in that sense, just another symptom rather than the cause of our recent troubles. The spread of Wahabism, which Prince Turki and others persuaded the CIA to use as a strategic asset of convenience, is a bigger problem. And the Saudi-funded radicalisation of Muslim populations around the world is a bigger one still, and may yet prove terminal for parts of Europe.
But a man in Waziristan or Overtheristan watching Cindy Sheehan on CNN? He’s not what it’s about any more.
This is basically true. I want Osama dead mind you. Head on a pike stuck in the ground and all that, of course. But his life or death is important only in that his continued evasion of capture or death gives the anti-war side a club to beat President Bush with. They are wrong, but they say the war cannot be won until he is dead or caught.
This of course makes me think of the good old days in the good war of 1991--the Persian Gulf War (aka Desert Storm). Then, the loyal opposition slammed President Bush the elder on a daily basis for "personalizing" the crisis as one between himself and Saddam. How simplistic, they said. President Bush calls President Hussein merely "Saddam" in a show of disrespect, they said! Never mind that is how Saddam called himself.
I never believed it was really just about Bush versus Saddam despite those charges, so the new policy of ignoring the enemy hiding in a cave poring over CBS polling data is no big deal to me. But to the opposition, you'd think this change in emphasis should be considered a great leap in formulating sophisticated, big-brained, foreign policy based on their old complaints.
But as the saying goes, "Damned if you're President Bush; and damned if you're the other President Bush."
