Osama Bin Desperate?
Osama bin Laden released an audio tape statement that focused on the Sunnis of Iraq, warning them not to fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq, the bin Laden affiliate currently reeling from the combined forces of the American surge and the Anbar Awakening. The tape got made before the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, as Osama didn't mention al-Qaeda's success in Pakistan. He did make clear that he sees Iraq as a central battlefront in his jihad against the West:
Osama bin Laden warned Iraq's Sunni Arabs against fighting al-Qaida and vowed to expand the terror group's holy war to Israel in a new audiotape Saturday, threatening "blood for blood, destruction for destruction."Most of the 56-minute tape dealt with Iraq, apparently al-Qaida's latest attempt to keep supporters in Iraq unified at a time when the U.S. military claims to have al-Qaida's Iraq branch on the run. ...
Bin Laden said Sunni Arabs who have joined the Awakening Councils "have betrayed the nation and brought disgrace and shame to their people. They will suffer in life and in the afterlife."
Osama's biggest problem in Iraq is AQI. In those territories they have held, the terrorists have conducted themselves in the most brutal of fashions, forcing "marriages" on unwilling women and tribes, and cutting off the heads of children when their co-religionists resisted. AQI imposed Taliban-like shari'a law on a populace more cosmopolitan than the Afghans, who mostly resisted it as well, and freely tortured and killed anyone who didn't like it.
The Sunnis know -- now -- that Osama's threats are much less worse than the reality of AQI control. The entire organizations consists of lunatics and sadists using Islam as an excuse for their depravity. After allying with these foreigners in the first months and years after the American invasion, they quickly determined that they have a better chance of survival by killing as many of the AQI terrorists as they can, and that forced them into the arms of the Americans.
The more Osama threatens them, the closer the Sunnis will cleave to the US. American forces do not rape, pillage, and commit mass murder, which makes the choice pretty clear. And the more Osama threatens, the more he concedes that a defeat in Iraq will cripple his triumphalism and expose his organization as a tawdry army of serial killers and perverts, and not Allah's Chosen. When that happens, Osama will find himself in more desperate straits than ever.
Posted by Ed Morrissey on December 30, 2007 7:14 AM | Comments () | TrackBacks (0)
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