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Al Qaeda have, apparently, endorsed John McCain.

One post, on a secure messageboard. That's like saying, because Mannahin posted something supporting Obama on the DCM boards, that all of Dakka was behind Obama.

It's a single opinion that's getting blown out of proportion; it's not a reflection on McCain at all.

it's a pretty inflated article. IMO it's similar to the right's attempts to tie Obama and Ayers. One post on a website doesn't mean anything in this context.

Of course, it does raise an interesting question about how to fight terrorism, specifically Al Queda. While the rise of islamaofacism doesn't need any help from us, by engaging and pushing hard to wipe them out we've also increased their validity as martyrs. its' a common trend throughout history in which radical groups gain power after being attacked by an authority. The war in Afganistan did a lot of good, but it was fundamentally a war between the United States and Islamic Radicals. Unless I'm missing large chunks of history, I can't think of many radical, populist, military movements that have been defeated through military action (The US Civil war was both reactionary and aristocratic, not populist or radical).

I think there is a key difference between this and the Ayers link. That being, while Ayers boils down to"knowing terrorists is bad", this article is about how McCain's policy positions serve to (unintentionally) enable terrorists. And that the terrorists themselves know it.

I think there is a difference as well, but it's being cast not as a policy piece (how best to deal with terrorists abroad) but as a campaign piece. Of course, nobody would read a peice about strategies for dealing with Al Qaeda recruitment, just as nobody would care about how an old radical has gone from bombings to education reform. They will read: "Candidate + Terrorist!" It's not the world's most well intentioned article, is all I"m saying.

In 2004 bin Laden released a video on the eve of the election. He made some comments about not caring who the president was, but then set about mocking Bush for the majority of the video. The response in the electorate was inevitable and perfectly understandable, Americans closed ranks behind Bush and polls swung towards him by a couple of points.

bin Laden isn’t a dumb guy, I think he knew the expected effect of his video. I think it benefitted him and his cause to get Bush back in again, as he could then clam America supported the Iraq war.

There’s probably lots that could be said about whether McCain or Obama will be better at dealing with terrorism. But I don’t think AQ really has much of an opinion one way or the other. If they did, they’d do a lot more than put a message on a forum.

It could be argued that a lot of the US foreign policy for the past 30 years or more has inadvertently helped promote Islamic extremism. It's silly to try and pin that on one guy.

Putting an "AQ endorsement" on either candidate's shoulders is just stupid. And if AQ even thinks they'd get another Bush with McCain, they'd be disappointed. I'm sure he and his staff would demonstrate a better grasp of "strategery" than the blubbering idiot we currently have in office.

That is, unless McCain kicks it and Palin gets the conn, in which case we'd have a winking idiot in office and all bets are off.

THAT'S their devious plan! Instead of mass murder, they poison President McCain's Ensure, leaving us with VP Palin and a holy war on both sides! Ingenious, brilliant... and silly.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the Palins themselves hide McCain's sunscreen every time they visit the White House. I don't think she has McCain's back...not one bit.

Kilkrazy wrote:It could be argued that a lot of the US foreign policy for the past 30 years or more has inadvertently helped promote Islamic extremism. It's silly to try and pin that on one guy.

That isn't really the point though. The point is that our foreign policy for the last 30 years has been prosecuted by some very intelligent men. Indeed, our general prosperity during that same time period is (to an extent) indicative of that. These guys drew up a general schema for interacting with the world that rested on 3 basic premises.

1) There is an 'evil' empire against which we can ideologically leverage ourselves.

2) Information can be manipulated to create truth, without regard to reality.

3) Technological superiorty equals 'shock and awe'.

Each and every one of these assumptions was disproved in the last 8 years. They are all fundamental to the Neocon ideology. McCain is a self-described Neocon foot-soldier. It isn't so much that this is all McCain's fault, but that he would inadvertantly enact the same mistakes of the past decade.