The contents of previously unreleased 14 minutes of OBL’s tape are eerily similar to what John Robb has been writing about for some time. (If you don’t read him regularly, you should.)

While this shows OBL is far from being a mere rabble-rouser, some have noted that his economic thinking is extremely simplistic. This is no doubt true: the US economy has depth and is likely to sustain a war by itself for four more years, however it also misses the point; Al Qaida’s motive is not to win but to be stomped upon, again and again. This stomping, they hope, will be heavy-handed enough (shades of “we had to burn the village in order to save it” Vietnam style warfare) and cause enough collateral damage to arouse resentment across the world, further isolating America and especially arouse the fury of the demographically-surging Muslim world:

[America] has started a campaign which has forced the majority of Muslims against it. But of course tactically it has scored major gains. A lot of these so-called strategic analysts mistake these tactical gains for strategic leverage. The point is that these people are not strategic analysts because they never bring the historical, ideological and social dimensions into their calculations. They only consider political and military factors…

There is some reason to believe that of late the current administration has become more sensitive to social dimensions: the siege of Fallujah being a good example. Interestingly, by fighting in Iraq, the US has opened up a new strategic front in the war on terror.

Do opportunities for strategic gain exist in Iraq given the US’ heavy-handed application of military force? Yes — if it is able to deliver on its promise to plant democracy in the middle-east. A thriving democracy in Iraq will show the Arab street that a third option exists, away from their rigid mullahcracies and away from the promised glories of martyrdom. It is a admittedly a huge gamble to take, because it questions the conventional wisdom that the Muslim world would never accept ‘Western’ traditions like liberal democracy and the separation of church and state (incidentally, conventional wisdom in 1947 was that India wasn’t ready for democracy either). If it succeeds, it will resoundingly show once and for all that like all men Muslims too desire happiness in this world as opposed to the next.

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