Know your Enemy

Read the transcript of the latest Al Qaeda tape. These guys aren't stupid. Like Goebbels, they know all about the big lie. The problem is, with the kind of incompetence and invective so prominent at the highest levels of our government, lies like this sound reasonable. Bin Laden (if he's still alive) has no illusions about his goal. He wants to rule the world. Basically, he wants him and his fellow lunatics to take the place of corporations and governments at the pinnacle of power. But because of the way that western governments and multinational corporations do business, he can easily claim to be acting in the interest of the downtrodden. We're giving him ammunition for his propaganda with every day that genocide continues in Darfur or malaria goes untreated in Malawi. It doesn't matter that a jihadist world government would usher in a holocaust unlike the world has ever seen. So long as the west has the resources to fix world problems, without actually doing so, the jihadist manifesto will sound like a good alternative to desperate people.