SO the lackey with writing skills who's
playing bin Laden wants to portray himself and his band of murderous nutjobs as some sort of benevolent protector of Arabs and Muslims against the U.S. military deployment in the Middle East.
The hundreds of thousands of dead, maimed, and displaced as a result of their supporter's attacks on civilians are a testament to the 'seeds of hatred' planted by bin Laden from when he began his murderous attacks to the present violence committed by those who identify their own cause of resistance to the American advance on their territory with al-Qaeda. Fomenting hatred against the U.S. by drawing us into a tit-for-tat war to defend the invasions and occupations Bush was lured and goaded into has been 'al-Qaeda's' cynical game all along.
It is precisely the type of outreach to the Muslim community that President Obama is engaged in this week that the opportunistic terrorist organization fears the most. As the president noted this year, al-Qaeda isn't building schools, hospitals, or homes__they're just bent on destroying and tearing down. It's all they are able or willing to do in support of their manufactured jihad.
It is also, precisely, the type of military response the Bush administration postured as a defense against al-Qaeda, in Iraq - which the Obama administration has chosen to continue, in their rhetoric and in the extension of the occupation there (and the escalation of force in Afghanistan) - that has allowed the propaganda wing of the terrorist organization to portray the goals of new administration as akin to the last one's.
It will be the president's most important challenge in his address Thursday in Cairo, to convince Muslims that the U.S. is engaged in their military deployments against the forces of al-Qaeda, and not against the civilian community in the way of that grudging offensive. The prevalence of U.S.-led attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan during this administration in which civilians have been killed has provided an opening for detractors in the region to question the sincerity of the president when he expresses concern for the safety of the population.
Moreover, the entire thrust of the continuing and escalating U.S. military activity in the region has threatened to obscure and overshadow any diplomatic or humanitarian gestures which, by nature, aren't as easily or readily approved, deployed and implemented as the militarism. That predominance of military activity allows detractors (like the scribe portraying bin-Laden) to rally Muslims and others in the region to oppose the U.S. aims and ambitions.
What President Obama needs to communicate in his address Thursday, is that the U.S. is guileless in its defenses against its al-Qaeda nemesis. That effort will require the president to express how the security interests of Muslims and others in the region are threatened by that American nemesis and to enlist their help in pushing back the scourge. But it will also require the president to reaffirm the common interests between the U.S. and countries in the region which will require more to achieve than these grudging exercises of military force against any and every combatant who identifies their cause with the terrorists.
President Obama needs to begin to turn the focus of American involvement in the Middle East away from the military mission to the realization of their oft-stated diplomatic and humanitarian goals. If this trip and address are designed to do nothing more than make room for another round of unbridled militarism, it will fail miserably.
If the address and effort by the administration is designed to isolate al-Qaeda and turn the Muslim-dominated populations away from support and toleration of the terrorists and their allies the president will need to demonstrate (rhetorically, and later in actions) his commitment to independence and primacy of these nations in confronting what the U.S. now regards as their own responsibility to vengeance. The 'seeds of hatred' planted by the original 9-11 attackers have produced a harvest of self-perpetuating attacks and reprisals in the Middle East and Asia. It is the president's task to avoid feeding and watering that deadly growth with more arbitrary militarism.
Before leaving for the Middle East, the president spoke to the task ahead Thursday and beyond. "You know, there are misapprehensions about the West on the part of the Muslim world," he told the BBC. "And, obviously, there are some big misapprehensions about the Muslim world when it comes to those of us in the West."
"I think the thing that we can do, most importantly, is serve as a good role model. And that's why, for example, .. closing Guantanamo, from my perspective, as difficult as it is, is important," the president said. "The danger I think is when the United States or any country thinks that we can simply impose these values on another country with a different history and a different culture."
This is an entirely new crop the president is hoping to sow in the region's scorched earth with his outreach. All the remnants of the original al-Qaeda can hope to do in response is to salt the ground before him with their goading hate. The opportunity to build and grow is all Mr. Obama's.
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