Bin Ladin On the Ropes

John F. Schmidt

1/20/06

If ever there was a sign that things are looking up in the war on Terror, it must be the recent news that Bin Ladin has suggested a “Truce” with America so that he won’t pull off any more terror plots against our homeland.

True to form, the “usual suspects” have trotted out some doomsday scenarios to explain why this means we are losing the war on terror. The New York Times quotes analysts (Muslims from Egypt – a real reliable source of unbiased information on the meaning of Bin Ladin’s actions, no doubt) who cite the tape as evidence that Bin Ladin is still active and able to act. Others see the timing of the tape as evidence that Bush’s White House is pulling Bin Ladin’s strings and timing the release of the tapes to deflect unfavorable public attention from domestic issues such as upcoming wiretapping hearings. The Liberals see Bush under every rock, it seems. (MRC, CyberAlert, 1/20/06, item 1)

But his tape is really good news for a number of reasons.

First, and fundamentally, winners don’t ask for truces, losers do. Bin Ladin and his network of terrorists are getting their butts kicked in some highly painful ways. Several Senior Al Qaeda operatives were killed by a Predator bomb recently, demonstrating that intelligence is actively pinpointing the terrorists in their hideouts, even in the tribal regions of Pakistan, which hitherto has been their safe haven. That has to be unsettling to Bin Ladin. He could be next. The successful elections in Iraq also demonstrated that he lacked the power to effectively disrupt the elections or incite sectarian warfare. He is steadily losing.

It is also good news because his suggestion of a “Truce” clearly shows that global Jihad is losing its glamour as the people of Afghanistan and Iraq begin to enjoy freedom they never enjoyed under radical Islamic thugs.

It is good news because any time Ladin appeals to the cooked-up polls in the U.S., he publicly discredits the polls and the pollsters by drawing attention to the absurdity of the assumption that they represent. No American who loves freedom wants us to bug out and abandon those countries simply to obtain a few short moments of peace for ourselves, leaving them to the tender mercies of Al Qaeda. Where the polls are used to suggest that the average American wants to quit and leave, they are lying. He, and the Liberal American media, are appealing to a base, cowardly motive that Americans have never entertained for long. We went to war for good reasons, not the least of which was that the freedom of these peoples is bound up with our own continuing freedom. If we abandon them, we ultimately abandon what sustains us – our courage to stand up and fight for the weak and the oppressed.

It is good news because he clearly is the one who needs “Security and Stability” after running and hiding from rat hole to rat hole for over four years. He suggests that “we” would rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, the “we” paying for it would be the U.S., and the “we” rebuilding the Islamic thug network in these countries would be Al Qaeda.

His suggested “truce” would actually be security and stability for Al Qaeda to rebuild their shattered network and begin operating in earnest in the U.S. since their resources in the rest of the world could then be released to consolidate their new territory. Their next move would be to redouble their efforts to attack the U.S. homeland rather than running and hiding in Iraq and Afghanistan. Under Bin Ladin’s plan, the U.S. would enjoy a very short “truce.”

It is good news because the bravado of his comments indicates what they fear. Bin Ladin’s message said his followers were not afraid of further American attacks because “a swimmer in the ocean does not fear the rain.” The truth is beginning to surface that they are precisely afraid of further American attacks as people begin to turn them in and expose them to aerial attack. It must be a terrible thing to have to be looking over your shoulder all the time, wondering if your “safe-house” was about to go up in flames after being hit by a remotely-guided HellFire missile. (What an appropriate name indeed for an instrument that was crafted to send these people to their well deserved place in Hell!)

It is good news because he is still in hiding. This fact alone demonstrates more graphically than almost anything that he has nowhere he feels safe. One could almost imagine that he might have already surfaced standing alongside the hate-spewing leader of Iran, but it doesn’t happen. If he were winning, we would be seeing him gloating in some venue where he could trot his ideas out in public. But he is a hunted man; an unwelcome man, even in the most radical of Islamic countries. His public presence would cement the suspicion that the host country was also publicly supporting global Jihad. That in turn would be big trouble for the host country. Remember that the American anti-Terror Doctrine, pronounced by President Bush while the ruins of the World Trade Center Towers were still smoldering, is that we will go after states that sponsor terrorism. It is one thing for an Iran or a Syria to play an innocent role in public while secretly sponsoring terrorism, but it is an entirely different situation to flaunt that fact by trotting out Bin Ladin as a welcome head of state. He is truly a man without a country.

It is good news because his blusters of pulling off attacks on American Shores since 9-11 have so far failed. And even if he does manage to set off a bomb, or cause some havoc, we will respond to it and move on. Such a terrorist action also will automatically undo four years of Liberal (and Bin Ladin’s own) efforts to persuade Americans to give up the fight. It will instead re-galvanize even the vacillating among us to redouble our efforts to resist. The American people are not the people of Spain who capitulated at the first sign of terror. We are a people of courage, and good will toward other nations. This exercise of defending ourselves abroad is good for the oppressed peoples of the world and it is also eminently good for us too. History will demonstrate this fact as we hold to our course.

It is impossible to prevent all attacks in a country that is as large and open as this, but Bin Ladin and all the terrorists in the world cannot destroy us. As Abraham Lincoln so sagely pointed out in his Lyceum Speech, “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

Bin Ladin appeals in vain to fear and hopelessness by offering a “Truce” which is actually an invitation to suicide. And to those who have their eyes open, it is the same kind of truce that the pestilent Arafat declared he wanted with Israel. (See “Islamic Peace Treaties”)

It is really good news that Bin Ladin telegraphs his weakness and hopelessness every time he issues a tape or broadcast. Because of the firm and resolute policy of this Bush administration, backed by the American People, Bin Ladin is “on the ropes.”