What does Bin Laden think of Obama?
With less than a week before the election on November 4th, it looks increasingly likely that we will have managed to avoid an “October surprise” from Osama Bin Laden. The concern among some people, of course, was that Bin Laden would launch an attack on the US in order to influence the election.
Osama Bin Laden on a t-shirt in Brazil.
The problem Bin Laden faces, of course, is that any kind of scare tactic he employs in the runup to the election would almost certainly be interpreted as an attempt to influence the election in favor of McCain – in other words, it could be viewed as a perverse endorsment of McCain by Bin Laden, and that could easily backfire (to say the least). There was an icident recently, however, in which some Islamic radicals posted a message on an Al Quaeda website in which they speculated that a McCain victory would advance the cause of Al Quaeda. Nicholas Kristof wrote an op-ed in the New York times calling it The Endorsment From Hell.
There has been some speculation, however, that this endorsment is actually reverse psychology. Surely Al Quaeda knows that their websites are monitored by US intelligence agencies, and surely Al Quaeda knows that explicitly rooting for a particular candidate is not likely to do that candidate any good.
Is it possible, then, that Al Quaeda actually doesn’t care for a McCain presidency. The question here is whether we truly understand our enemy. If Bin Laden is a nihilist who wants nothing but chaos to reign forever more, then perhaps he would like to continue his conflict with the US. Is it possible, however, that even Bin Laden is inspired by the possibility of an Obama presidency? Not inspired to hate, but inspired to hope? Could this election be causing him to question every assumption he had about the United States? A dark skinned man with the name Barack Hussein Obama is about to become the President of the United States? I’ll bet you that Bin Laden himself doesn’t know what to make of it but finds himself oddly hopeful.