The ‘Absurd Record’ of Osama bin Laden: Liberation, France

Recruiment goes on at al-Qaeda …

Two weeks after al-Qaeda’s Christmas day bombing attempt, the theme of terrorism continues to dominate global commentary about the United States.

Today we posted two articles on the theme, one from France’s Liberation about the abysmal failure of Osama bin Laden, and another from Brazil’s Folha about the silarly devastating failure of political economist and philosopher Francis Fukuyama.

Writing about the ‘absurd record’ of Osama bin Laden, Laurent Joffrin writes for France’s Liberation in part:

“In a decade of bloody business, Osama bin Laden, dedicated global enemy No. 1 since September 11, has achieved none of his demented objectives. The march toward a “new caliphate” consistent with his conception of medieval Islam hasn’t advanced a single step. The only system that even approaches this archaic utopia, the Taliban, was swept away in a matter of weeks and plunged back into an interminable guerrilla war.”

And for Brazil’s Folha newspaper, columnist Joao Pereira Coutinho, commenting on Francis Fukuyama’s badly-timed Christmas article in Newsweek that restated his belief in an end to history:

Francis Fukuyama published a new essay in Newsweek to announce – again stupidly bragging – that history had ended. It took only a few days to realize that history hadn’t ended. On Christmas Day itself, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab got on an airplane in The Netherlands. His destination: Detroit, the United States. And in his underpants was a bomb to detonate during the flight. … We made it to the end of a decade, it is true. But what’s scarier is that we’ll end it exactly as we began: with the certainty that Islamist terrorism doesn’t agree with Mr. Fukuyama’s thesis. History goes on.

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