The Public Interest

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Matt Yglesias parses the new audiotape from Osama bin Laden:

“OBL didn’t used to lean very heavily on the Israel issue in his rhetoric. After all, there are lots of militant anti-Israel groups out there. The key conceit of al-Qaeda is that those groups are thinking way too small, and people need to join into a much more grandiose war than an effort to destroy a very small country. I think this reflects al-Qaeda’s recent difficulty recruiting, as you can think of this as bin Laden shifting to a kind of lowest common denominator appeal. We see here that the indifference to Palestinian suffering that’s considered de rigeur by many in American politics is a key strategic vulnerability of the United States; when the well is running dry, this is something people looking to rally recruits against us turn to.”

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