Here is a little good news for this thread:
Is bin Laden losing heart?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1057962/posts A terrorist leader who appeals for advice on how to fight adversity is already applying the loser label to himself
RICHARD GWYN
Except as confirmation that he's still alive, Osama bin Laden's latest audiocassette has largely been dismissed as yet another "same-old, same-old," rant.
In fact, bin Laden's tape is one of the most interesting he's given since the Al Qaeda leader's early days on the run when he defiantly called for holy war to demonstrate that defeat in Afghanistan didn't mean the defeat of terrorism.
The interest in this new tape lies not in its content, which is indeed familiar and stale, but in its tone. That tone is palpably pessimistic.
As in: "O Muslims, The situation is serious and the misfortune is momentous."
And: "Lend me your ears and open up your hearts to me so that we may examine these pitch-black misfortunes and so that we may consider how we can find a way out of these adversities and calamities."
Rather than a Churchillian-style speech of a general rallying his troops for a last, glorious charge to the top of a hill, these are the ruminations of a commander who not only is keenly aware of the setbacks his side has experienced but who himself is beginning to become demoralized.
It's possible to read too much into a single speech. Arab rhetoric tends to exaggeration.
Bin Laden may be getting tired of forever skulking around in chilly, damp caves. He may be increasingly frustrated by the difficulty of keeping in touch with his supporters when a single phone call is likely to bring a reply in the form of a cruise missile.
It's possible also, though, that bin Laden is beginning to yield to pessimism and demoralization because he recognizes he's losing the war.
To make that same point more cautiously, bin Laden may be approaching a tipping point after which his cause will lose momentum and his supporters begin to melt away.
Consider these recent events:
Saddam Hussein is captured.
Libya announces it will abandon all its weapons of mass destruction.
Afghan politicians agree to a new constitution.
Iran agrees to allow unlimited United Nations' inspection of its nuclear facilities.
Saudi Arabia starts cracking down on Al Qaeda cells, and with considerable success.
Syria starts to try to break out of its long isolation, reaching out to its old enemy Turkey (a U.S. ally) and proposing peace talks with Israel.
Not all these encouraging events will go from success to success. Setbacks are inevitable.
Thus, the fact that 2 1/2 years have now passed without Al Qaeda repeating its spectacular success of Sept. 11, does not mean than another terrible attack in the U.S. may not happen, even as this column is being written. Clearly, though, the prevailing trends in the war against terror are positive.
In Iraq, for instance, attacks by insurgents are down by one-fifth since before Saddam's capture. In lockstep, the pace of reconstruction there is at last starting to quicken.
Something much more important is now happening in Iraq. This is, what is not happening there. The U.S. invasion, Western critics widely predicted and, of course, bin Laden hoped and expected, would be the military equivalent of kicking over a hornet's nest.
The anti-U.S. insurgency has indeed achieved some considerable successes. But it's been strictly local, in the Sunni "triangle" and in parts of Baghdad.
Very few Shiites, no Kurds and many Sunnis — the great majority of Iraqis that's to say — have not taken part in it.
The iron law of terrorism is that either it escalates into a popular rebellion, or it eventually fades away.
As significant, the insurgents have failed to attract outside supporters.
By the best available estimates, only a few hundred "foreigners" from countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan, have slipped into Iraq to join the insurgency.
Presented with the best possible target — an American army of occupation in the heart of the Middle East and, thus, available to be attacked directly by Al Qaeda terrorists — bin Laden has failed to mobilize more than a handful of supporters against his, and their, enemy.
Unless something dramatic happens soon, the deadly label of "loser" is going to be attached to bin Laden.
He's looking more and more like an ideologue who took on a fight he lacked the resources, ability and imagination to win.
About terrorism, there is one other iron law: No terrorist leader who looks like a loser can ever win.
A terrorist leader who appeals to his supporters for advice on how to "find a way out of these adversities and calamities" is already applying the loser label to himself.