Foreign Policy blogger Marc Lynch (a.k.a. Abu Aardvark) has an interesting post up at FP's new-minted digital playground, which has already drawn lurid attention to itself for its inclusion of Israel Lobby theorist Stephen Walt and his dubious "thought experiments." Lynch is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, and, much like his cheerleader and confrere-at-the-keyboard Juan Cole, has built a reputation as a Mideast analyst who sees almost every effort to stamp out jihadism as an unintentional bolster to jihadism. Case in point: His latest claim that Israel's buffeting of Hamas is sweet music to the ears of Al Qaeda:

Israel's assault on Gaza has really created an almost unbelievable no-lose situation for al-Qaeda. If Hamas "wins", then al-Qaeda gets to share in the benefits of the political losses incurred by its Western and Arab enemies (Zawahiri mentions Mubarak and the Saudis in this tape, but not the Jordanians) and can try to take advantage of the political upheavals which could follow. If Hamas "loses", al-Qaeda still wins. It will shed no tears at seeing one of its bitterest and most dangerous rivals take a beating at Israel's hands or losing control of a government that they have consistently decried as illegitimate and misguided. Either way, the Gaza crisis guarantees that a far more radicalized Islamic world will face the incoming Obama administration -- potentially severely blunting the challenge which al-Qaeda clearly felt after the election (hence Zawahiri's attempt to pre-emptively discredit Obama by declaring the attack Obama's "gift" to Muslims).

The way this crisis is playing out shows the bankruptcy and strategic dangers of trying to simply reduce Hamas to part of an undifferentiated "global terrorist front". The Muslim Brotherhood, from whence Hamas evolved twenty years ago, is no friend of the United States or Israel but is nevertheless one of al-Qaeda's fiercest rivals. Zawahiri himself penned one of the most famous anti-Brotherhood tracts, Bitter Harvest. Over the last few years, the doctrinal and political conflict between the Brotherhood and al-Qaeda's salafi-jihadism has become one of the most active fault-lines in Islamist politics. As ‘Abu Qandahar’ wrote on al-Qaeda's key al-Ekhlaas forum in October 2007, the "Islamic world is divided between two projects, jihad and Ikhwan [Brotherhood]."

Lynch's reason for how Al Qaeda "wins" if Hamas loses is that the latter terror group's monopoly on Gaza would effectively be broken, thus allowing the former to finally infilitrate (cf. "Up to now, AQ-minded groups have had little success in penetrating Gaza, because Hamas had it locked. Now they clearly have high hopes of finding an entree with a radicalized, devastated population and a weakened Hamas.").  If this does in fact happen, then I wonder if Lynch has extrapolated the likely consequences, which tell against his implied thesis that military incursions such as these are inherently self-defeating. Al Qaeda's setting up shop right next door to Israel would almost certainly do two things: 1. Give Israel even greater legitimacy to wage war there, if not invite a U.S./international military presence; 2. Change the world's perception of the zone of conflict from that of a colonial-nationalist struggle into that of a... "global terrorist front." (What price immediate cease-fires when the premier enemy of our time, with a trail of carnage stretching from New York to London to Madrid, is doing the fighting?) 

What Lynch doesn't acknowledge -- at least not in this post -- is that Al Qaeda's flagging popularity is due in large part to its military and political defeat in Iraq,  where it (foolishly) decided to create a cynosure of Islamist terror and test out the prospects of a neo-caliphate. If it should try to do this again, and in the one place it can ill afford to have Muslims grow more disillusioned with its activities, might we expect the realist school to indulge us with the following headline: "and the winner is... America!"?

In the wake of the most recently released Osama bin Laden audio recording I’m compelled to ask several questions:

1. Why has al Qaeda been unable to release one single video of bin Laden demonstrably talking about current events since October 2004?

2. How has Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri managed to make over 10 such videos and have them released in the same period of time?

3. Why isn’t much made of this?

Al Qaeda has to know how important it is to offer a credible piece of evidence that bin Laden is alive. As U.S. forces continue to demoralize (and kill) their brethren in Iraq, and as their former protectors in Afghanistan continue to descend mountain hide-outs for yearly spring culling, the least they could do would be to youtube a verifiable morale-booster from their supposed number one. Yet this task has remained, for them, insurmountable—for over four years.

The last time Osama bin Laden was seen discussing current events was in a clip broadcast on Arab television October 29, 2004, four days before the U.S. presidential election. He demonstrated cognizance of the then present by offering, “Despite entering the fourth year after September 11, Bush is still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened.” After that installment, we get some audiotapes, narrated videos, and unearthed oldies through 2006. Then the supposed return to form comes in September 2007. This is the coal black beard video. Amid all the speculation about the significance of the dye job, curiosity about the video’s genuinely puzzling nature was almost non-existent. Fox News reported matter-of-factly:

During the video, bin Laden's image moves for only a total of about 3 1/2 minutes in two segments, staying frozen the rest of the time while his remarks continue.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it might have resulted from a technical glitch while Al Qaeda passed the video through a variety of computer sites to mask its cyber trail.

What’s not mentioned is that the "freezes" occur several times, and only while current events are being discussed. In other words, there isn’t a second during which Osama bin Laden can be seen talking about anything after 2004. If I was in charge of A/V the day that tape was shot I’d have been pretty thorough about making sure it was glitch-free.

Since then, there’s been more audiotapes and narration over still pictures.

Dr. Zawahiri, on the other hand, practically has his own vlog. He’s turned out a long series of up-to-the-minute videos, some as long as an hour and, as far as I know, absent of glitches. Does al Qaeda’s number two have better equipment and more capable videographers than the world’s most wanted man?

At this point, I concede I have no answers to questions 1 and 2. I don’t begin to have a technical explanation as to how recordings may have been doctored, etc. And if I see a clip of Osama bin Laden actually talking about, say, Iraq’s al-Maliki government or Annapolis I’ll readily accept the fact. I merely find it all a bit curious. As to question 3, the only people who would make a big deal of bin Laden’s being dead (or not provably alive) are in the Bush administration. But after “mission accomplished” and “last throes” maybe they have learned something about hubris after all.