A very interesting post over at Strategy Page called The Joke’s on Osama.
In short: Osama Bin Laden was once a highly popular figure in many Muslim countries. His ‘popularity peak’ perhaps, was on 9/11/01. However, five years after the attacks on the World Trade Center Al Qaeda is talking the talk, but no longer walking the walk: Al Qaeda has not been able to carry out attacks against the West for quite a long while now: instead, the US – leading the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ – has responded forcefully: within a couple of months after 9/11, Afghanistan was no longer a safe haven for terrorists, led by the Taliban. Other countries in the Middle East have, as a result of 9/11, been forced to cooperate (somewhat) with the West. The West was no longer passive: it chose the offensive.
If the analysis is accurate, it means that the aggressive approach towards Muslim extremism, or the result of it – terrorism – is paying off. Perhaps the West is not able to convince certain people in the Mideast to love freedom as much as we do, but we do seem to be able to confront them with the results of Muslim terrorism and their (quiet) support for it.
