Political Bloviation

Obama ought to make a bigger deal about this. The important take away is that the continued American presence in Iraq helps al Qaeda.

Op-Ed Columnist - The Endorsement From Hell - NYTimes.com
John McCain isn’t boasting about a new endorsement, one of the very, very few he has received from overseas. It came a few days ago:

“Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” read a commentary on a password-protected Islamist Web site that is closely linked to Al Qaeda and often disseminates the group’s propaganda.

The endorsement left the McCain campaign sputtering, and noting helplessly that Hamas appears to prefer Barack Obama. Al Qaeda’s apparent enthusiasm for Mr. McCain is manifestly not reciprocated…

…Yet the endorsement of Mr. McCain by a Qaeda-affiliated Web site isn’t a surprise to security specialists. Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism director, and Joseph Nye, the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, have both suggested that Al Qaeda prefers Mr. McCain and might even try to use terror attacks in the coming days to tip the election to him.“From their perspective, a continuation of Bush policies is best for recruiting,” said Professor Nye, adding that Mr. McCain is far more likely to continue those policies.

An American president who keeps troops in Iraq indefinitely, fulminates about Islamic terrorism, inclines toward military solutions and antagonizes other nations is an excellent recruiting tool. In contrast, an African-American president with a Muslim grandfather and a penchant for building bridges rather than blowing them up would give Al Qaeda recruiters fits.

(emphasis mine)

Ezra Klein thinks that it’s not receiving much press because it doesn’t neatly fit into the exisiting narrative about the candidates:

American political events are covered in a weird way where the actual “importance” of the event matters much less than its relationship to existing narratives. For instance: News that members of al Qaeda are privately discussing how best to ensure the election of one of the major candidate’s would, in theory, seem like a big deal to someone cognizant of the basic contours of recent American history. But because the terrorists were interested in electing John McCain, who is considered “tough” on terrorism and whose patriotism is beyond reproach, it’s not a big deal. If they had been talking about Barack Obama, who is considered less “tough” on terrorism and whose patriotism is considered more tenuous (the media could not explain either belief, incidentally, but both are deeply held, and important in coverage decisions), it would be a very big deal indeed. Sometimes, however, various media personages miss the weekly meeting and go off-message, as Nicholas Kristol did this weekend

Perhaps so, I’m tempted to stand outside of one of the local early voting sites with a sign reading “al Qaeda (heart) McCain Ask me why”

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