Another Ray Of Light

I hesitate to take comfort in analyses that purport the Islamo-fascists are getting weaker - that's usually when they're most dangerous - but this article by Amir Taheri from the NY Post does offer some hope.

The message [from al-Zawahiri] merits attention for a number of reasons.

To begin with, al-Zawahiri shows that although al Qaeda — with its leaders dead, captured or hiding in caves in remote regions — no longer exists as an organization, the ideology (or brand name) it represents is still a threat not only to several Muslim countries but also to the major Western democracies.

Then, too, al-Zawahiri acknowledges that those responsible for almost daily killings in Iraq are al Qaeda-style Arab terrorists, rather than Iraqi nationalists supposedly fighting against foreign occupation.

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The message reveals another interesting fact. For the past three years, al-Zawahiri had advocated a policy of focusing the terrorists' efforts on winning power in "vulnerable" Muslim countries — Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt. Yet his latest message shows that he is now persuaded that such a strategy has little chance of success. All the countries targeted are doing well in their war on terror; Afghanistan and Pakistan may have already turned the tide.

With no prospect of victory in any Muslim country, al-Zawahiri now seems closer to bin Laden's strategy of organizing raids against major Western democracies in the hope of terrorizing their publics into abandoning their Islamic allies.

Al-Zawahiri's message deserved more than a mere yawn. For it was an implicit admission that the terrorists, though still dangerous and deadly, are facing grim prospects.