Al Qaeda Is Trying To "Bushify" Obama



According to BreakingNewsOnline's Twitter feed, Al Qaeda's Deputy Commander al-Zawahiri delivered a statement on Gaza situation. The overwhelming military advantage of Israel in Gaza has presented Al Qaeda will cynical photo ops calculated to inflame the Muslim world.

"These attacks," al-Zawahiri is quoted as saying, "are Obama's present to you (Palestinians) before he takes office." Charmed, I'm sure. Did Al Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri happen to get the memo that Constitutionally we have one President at a time? Ayman al-Zawahiri, who previously called President-elect Obama a "house negro" is once again trying to rattle the incoming administration with gassy rhetoric. It is clearly in Al Qaeda's interest, recruitment-wise, to back Obama into the same tight corner of tacit support for all and every Israeli military action against the Palestinians. Ayman al-Zawahiri, in his fevered and fetid fundamentalism, cannot distinguish between Obama's Centrism and Bush's neoconservatism -- or, worse, al-Zawahiri sees the difference, but in the searing spirit of the noble lie, twists perceptions in an already overheated situation.

It must have been frightening indeed for al-Zawahiri and his cronies to have heard the nuanced tone of the President-elect's language on how to deal with the Muslim world.

The President-elect, who studied in Indonesia and will use his full name -- Barack Hussein Obama -- when he places his hand on Lincoln's bible and takes office later this month will have an unprecedented credibility at the outset for a United States President in the Muslim world. Of the previous use of the term "house negro," Newsweek's Gilles Kepel wrote:

"The shift in the U.S. military policy promised by Obama has already begun to be implemented by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who will keep his job in the new administration. Strikes by Predator drones in the Afghan border region are becoming more efficient by the day, decimating the jihadists, who are already weakened by internecine conflicts.

"Defusing that lethal danger has become a question of life or death for Zawahiri and his friends (Osama bin Laden has vanished from public view). This desperation is probably what led the Qaeda ideologist to lash out at Obama in the audiotape. Al Qaeda certainly has plenty to be nervous about these days. Obama, of course, is to be the first black president of the United States, not to mention the first with a Muslim father and a middle name of Hussein. As such, he stands a good chance of restoring U.S. popularity internationally, especially in developing countries, where U.S. standing reached an all-time low under George W. Bush. Zawahiri has tried to ward off these dangers by launching a campaign of snigger and slander. On the tape, he quoted from Malcolm X's autobiography to label Obama a "house Negro"—that is, an Uncle Tom, whom Malcolm X contrasted to the 'field Negro,' the embodiment of colonial exploitation and the bearer of revolution.

"Playing the race card may well backfire on Zawahiri. In Arabic, the Qaeda leader disparaged Obama as abid, a very derogatory term meaning "slave." The use of this term by a white Egyptian aristocrat may play well in the Arab world, but it won't in Muslim countries south of Egypt, which are all too familiar with Arab racism."

Zawahiri also used the words "Crusader" -- as in American Crusader and Western Crusader -- throughout the videotape.