Interesting speculation
Is Bin Laden for Bush?
An uncomfortable possibility for the GOP.
By Mickey Kaus
Posted Monday, March 22, 2004, at 1:17 AM PT
Robert Novak cites a private intelligence expert, George Friedman, for the proposition that the election-changing Madrid bombing shows Al Qaeda wants to defeat Bush.
But Friedman believes the ultimate target is Bush himself, predicting an attempted use of terror to defeat him in November.
... The foreigner whose approbation Kerry surely disdains is Osama bin Laden, but counterterrorism experts say the U.S. election has become an al-Qaida priority. ...
Hmm. Doesn't it seem likely that Novak's take is 180 degrees wrong, an attempt to avoid the uncomfortable possibility that Al Qaeda and its allies may actually prefer Bush's reelection? For one thing, that's what the "group that claimed responsibility for the bombings" appears to have explicitly said:
"The Spanish people ... chose peace by choosing the party that was against the alliance with America," said a statement attributed to the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, which says it is affiliated with al-Qaida.
The statement said it supported Bush in his re-election campaign, saying it is not possible to find a leader "more foolish than you (Bush), who deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom.
"Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilization." [Seattle Times, March 20]
Perhaps the alleged Al-Masri Brigades statement is bogus. But it's Novak himself who treats it as authoritative. If one part of the statement is to be believed, why not the other part? And the underlying theory--that Bush's reelection will 'heighten the contradictions' and create more terrorists, ultimately producing an apocalyptic East-West clash--is an entirely plausible rendition of Al-Qaeda-ish ideology, no? Bin Laden, in this reading, would intend to use terror to split dovish Europe from hawkish America rather than to replace America's hawks.
