Osama’s latest tape

Initial reports suggest that Osama bin Laden's latest tape doesn't seem to have had much of an impact. In the tape, Bin Laden talked about how the West was destroying Palestine and Sudan. According to this Washington Post by Craig Whitlock, terrorism experts seemed unconvinced: Counterterrorism analysts said bin Laden was trying to portray himself as a champion of oppressed Muslims around the world, even though al-Qaeda has avoided involvement in many of the conflicts that he has decried. For example, bin Laden has largely ignored events in Sudan since he and his network were expelled from the country a decade ago. Similarly, al-Qaeda has no record of activity in the Palestinian territories. "Bin Laden is a master craftsman at recognizing issues and knowing how to exploit these issues for his own purposes," said M.J. Gohel, a London-based analyst and chief executive of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a security policy group. "He's trying to enlarge the global conflict and is trying to incite and anger the Muslim world against the West." Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism specialist and director of the Washington office of the Rand Corp., a California-based research group, said al-Qaeda is confronting the same challenge that all terrorism networks face: how to remain relevant as a radical movement over time. "It's entirely cynical," he said of bin Laden's rallying cry on behalf of Darfur and Hamas. "He's got to say something about someplace. They've got to keep talking or else they're going to be irrelevant, especially when they're not directly involved in the fighting." "These are contentious contemporary issues that he can glom onto and milk for his own ends," Hoffman added. "It's more rhetorical than factual. Bin Laden is no friend of the Sudanese. They told him to leave in 1996 and took his money. And Hamas has basically told al-Qaeda to mind its own business." Counterterrorism officials and analysts said al-Qaeda's leaders have also become more outspoken in recent months because they fear losing their influence in the fragmented world of Islamic fundamentalism. Bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician, have been effectively sidelined since the Sept. 11 attacks while other radical groups and figures, such as Hamas and Jordanian fighter Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, have stolen the limelight, the analysts said.Indeed, the BBC reports that bin Laden's message "has been disowned by the Sudanese government and Hamas." Marc Lynch notes that, "[This is] a fairly typical example of the refusal of many entrenched Islamist movements to accept al-Qaeda's claims to lead the Islamist umma." So this would seem to fit with Al Qaeda's slow descent into Tampa Bay Devil Rays metaphor territory (though, to be fair, at least the D-Rays are now under new management). The real test, however, will be to see whether anyone heeds bin Laden's call for attacks on Western citizens. Question to readers: if there is no spectacular terrorist attack in the next year -- on a par, say, with either the London or Madrid bombings -- is it safe to say that the threat from Al Qaeda should be seriously downgraded? UPDATE: Alas, the Egyptian bombing is tragic, but does not exactly fit the parameters of what I was asking.