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2 Bin Laden hits a note with US's
allies By Michael Scheuer
he has made a finely gauged
assessment of Europe's rampant anti-American
sentiment, as well as its decreasing official
support for US policies in the Muslim world.
The continuing threat present in bin
Laden's 29 November statement seems obvious, but,
as noted above, several Western commentators have
argued the message contains no threat. Bin Laden
told Europeans "it is better for you to restrain your
politicians" from supporting
the United States and to instead have them "work
diligently to remove oppression from the
oppressed". The
un-ally-yourselves-from-the-US-or-else nature of
these words is apparent, especially given the
rising tide of Islamism - rhetorical, politically
active, and violent - that has occurred in Europe
since bin Laden's 2004 truce offer was rejected .
Indeed, bin Laden's November 29 statement
is also meant to inform Muslims that he is - as
per the Prophet Mohammad's directions - giving the
Europeans a second chance to avoid being attacked.
Professor John Kelsay has recently written that
according to sharia law, one warning to an enemy
is sufficient, but the "renewal of the invitation
would be a good thing but is not required.
Commanders in the field have discretion in this
matter". For his Muslim audience, bin Laden chose
to do the "good thing" [6].
The unease in
Europe caused by bin Laden's clear threat was
augmented by last week's fortuitous - for al-Qaeda
and its allies - reminder to Europeans that they
live under a terrorist radiological/nuclear
threat, primarily because nuclear materials and
weapons in the Former Soviet Union have not been
fully secured. On November 29, Slovak authorities
arrested a Slovak, two Hungarians, and a Ukrainian
for attempting to sell about a pound of uranium
that apparently was acquired in Russia and which
had been enriched sufficiently to be considered
"weapons grade". While there was not enough
material to make a nuclear device, there was
plenty to build a radiological or "dirty" bomb
[7].
Doing the math When all is
said and done, are Western politicians and
commentators correct in suggesting bin Laden's
most recent statement is really just "nonsense"
and "ridiculous"? Looked at as an isolated
statement this conclusion might be plausible. But
in the overall context of the ally-stripping
thrust of al-Qaeda's media doctrine, one must
imagine that bin Laden and his lieutenants are
well pleased with matters as they stand today,
especially in Europe. Since 2002, President George
W Bush's circle of foreign-leader supporters has
thinned considerably; the UK's Tony Blair, Italy's
Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's Jose Maria Aznar, and,
most recently, Australia's John Howard have left
the scene via election defeats or party leadership
changes, all of which had much to do with the
support of those gentlemen for US policy in
Afghanistan and Iraq.
More troubling for
the United States, the list of either long-gone or
bound-for-home coalition members departing from
Iraq and Afghanistan is even lengthier: Italy,
Spain, South Korea, the Philippines, Japan,
Australia, Poland, Thailand, Portugal, Norway,
Singapore, Nicaragua, Honduras, the Dominican
Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Moldova, Ukraine, and
New Zealand [8].
Given this withering of
the US-led coalitions in Afghanistan and Iraq - an
obvious success for al-Qaeda's ally-stripping
campaign (even if that effort is only one of
several causative factors) - one wonders how a
senior US official could have said last week, "I
think our NATO allies understand quite clearly
what is at stake in Afghanistan as well as
elsewhere around the world in fighting terrorism
... and I see no diminution in that level of
commitment." [9] Clearly, bin Laden, al-Qaeda and
their allies have seen what the senior US official
missed.
Notes 1. All
quotes from bin Laden's November 29 statement in
this article are from: "Osama bin Laden: To the
European Peoples: A message from Sheikh Osama bin
Laden," IntelCenter, Threat and Claim Monitor,
November 30, 2007. The statement first appeared on
al-Jazeera, November 29. 2. "Bin Laden's call
'ridiculous': Afghan president," Agence France
Presse, November 30, 2007; "Osama's new nonsense,"
New York Post, November 30, 2007; US State
Department press briefing, November 30, 2007.
3. Bin Laden, "To the Peoples allied to the
tyrannical US Government," www.alneda.com,
November 21, 2002. 4. "Statement by Osama bin
Laden," al-Arabiyah television, April 14, 2004.
5. For a discussion of the terrorist situation
in the UK and Europe see "Full text of the speech
of MI-5 Director Jonathan Evans to the Society of
Editors in Manchester," Daily Telegraph Online,
November 6, 2007. 6. John Kelsay, Arguing
the Just War in Islam Cambridge, MA, Harvard
University press, 2007, page 105. 7. The
Associated Press, November 29, 2007. 8. Iraq:
Non-US Forces, globalsecurity.org. 9. US State
Department press briefing, November 30, 2007.
Michael Scheuer served in the
CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004. He
served as the chief of the bin Laden Unit at the
Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is
the once anonymous author of Imperial Hubris:
Why the West is Losing the War on Terror
and Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin
Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America.
Dr Scheuer is a senior fellow with The
Jamestown Foundation.
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