Bin Laden's speech

I was just telling my class on Middle East politics yesterday that Bin Laden's speeches receive attention in Washington, DC but not in the Middle East itself. I am not saying that the demise of the appeal of Al-Qa`idah in the Middle East was inevitable: but that Al-Qa`idah could have captured some appeal had it become factor against Israel, but it has not. The speeches of Bin Laden and Dhawahiri now are of interest to security and terrorism experts but not to mass audiences. He has no mass appeal although he may have enjoyed some for a few weeks after his first speech in the wake of Sep. 11. That was the only speech that really had a political impact in sympathy of Bin Laden, but it did not last. I have always argued that the movement's fortunes were always exaggerated: one person can cause a lot of damage and harm, just as 20 people can cause a lot of damage and harm. Just because the movement succeeded in perpetrating a horrific act of mass violence does not mean that the movement is powerful. There are those who argue (like `Abdul-Bari `Atwan) that Al-Qa`idah is now more effective because it has so many branches that are independent of one another. I disagree. The organization through its resort to merciless indiscriminate killing of civilians and its focus on innocent Western civilians, have left it with a very small (cultish) following. But most importantly, the organization has failed--in the eyes of Muslims and Arabs--to contribute to Palestinian struggle against Israel--Bin Laden's lousy poetry on the subject notwithstanding. Bin Laden's speech says nothing new: the same trashy jargon about a Jewish conspiracy in DC, and the notion that Obama is a mere puppet. There are three books mentioned by Bin Laden and one of them is clearly cited by Bin Laden without reading the book. He was talking about John Perkins' Confession of an Economic Hit Man but somebody must have misreported the contents to him. Amazon.com must not deliver to the caves where he resides.