Interessant

from cnn.com: U.S. rejects bin Laden tape's 'truce' offer

notable quotes-
"The war against America and its allies will not be confined to Iraq," the voice on the tape said, adding that "Iraq has become a magnet for attracting and training talented fighters."
"It's only a matter of time," the voice said, referring to attacks. "They are in the planning stages, and you will see them in the heart of your land as soon as the planning is complete."
"In response to the substance of the polls in the U.S., which indicate that Americans do not want to fight Muslims on Muslim land, nor do they want Muslims to fight them on their land, we do not mind offering a long-term truce based on just conditions that we will stick to.
"We are a nation that God banned from lying and stabbing others in the back. Hence, both parties of the truce will enjoy stability and security to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan, which were destroyed by war.
"There is no problem in this solution, but it will prevent hundreds of billions from going to influential people and warlords in America -- those who supported Bush's electoral campaign. And from this, we can understand Bush and his gang's insistence on continuing the war."

thus we conclude several things:
1. bin laden did not make his first international appearance in over a year idly. the content of his speech was not directed at members of al qaeda, making the american public his primary audience. this video then falls in the same category as nearly all other bin laden tapes: blatant propaganda. [I saw a few folks on some "left-leaning" blogs that merely presumed that the tape was fake and that the bush administration created the tape as a stumping tool towards military action against iran; they.. have a problem]
2. in the history of military propaganda (particularly modern, i.e. the past seventy years), the folks creating the propaganda rarely pull a reverse psychology trick. this has been especially true of terrorist organizations and the modern middle east.
3. it follows that the reaction bin laden & co are trying to elicit is not "well bin laden's bashing bush and the current policies.. and since he knows that we're going to go against whatever he suggests, he really wants us to support bush/current policy.. and therefore we'll stand all the stronger against it!" look at vichy france during WWII and messages coming out of the kremlin during the cold war. now that both conflicts are over, we're able to compare the propaganda record with the internal documents that reflect the actual views of the government involved. whenever did german propaganda try to elevate churchill's status in britain? whenever did soviet russia make a plug for reagan? from time immemorial until the present, propaganda is not designed to be complex and pull a princess bride. it is designed to antagonize the fears and insecurity of the population targeted with the hope of bringing division, discord, and demoralization. this case is no different.
4. to make things absolutely clear, there's a reason why half of the tape sounded like it was pulled from fahrenheit 9/11. and it's not because moore's right.

al qaeda is hurting. they're hurting bad. sending in bombers from outside iraq to bomb iraqi civilians hasn't exactly made the iraqis happy. bombing native jordanians hasn't exactly made them happy either. the enemy is losing soldiers at apparently a 10:1 clip compared to american casualties, and as valuable as every american casualty has been to the enemy's cause via our own media (if WW2 had been fought with our media covering it.. we'd live in a different world), the pool of terrorist recruits is growing smaller every day. pissing off the local muslim populations has only encouraged their support base to rat them out and seek their death (see al-zarquawi's recent disownage by his own family). logistics and planning for future operations in the american heartland have been disrupted by continued success in afghanistan, well-intelled raids in iraq, and the little-discussed fruits of current american policy.

the question until now has been "well, even if the above is true, how much have we hurt them on an absolute scale?" now we know.

bin laden's suggestion for a truce is simultaneously a play to the half of our nation who wants our troops home now and an admission of how much damage al qaeda has received over the past four years. we hit them directly in afghanistan, but I suspect that iraq has been even more of a logistical drain on al qaeda than it's been on us:
- a terrorist organization's support structure can rely only so much on fear to keep folks in line. since most of their recruits of late have been hell-bent on american presence in iraq, they have little choice but to direct their focus there. this is factually supported in that al qaeda's training camps seem to consistently be focused on combat training. as opposed to more.. asymmetrical endeavors.
- continuing the item above, it takes planners and higher-ups to be able to direct these missions in iraq. planners that used to spend time figuring out how to get us by flying planes into our cities are being forced to plan missions against muslims and armed, armored american troops.
- as useful as our presence in iraq has been to al qaeda's recruitment effort, the growing suspicion and downright anger towards al qaeda fermenting in much of the muslim world involved will have long-term effects that will ultimately produce a much stronger drain on al qaeda than shooting them will.
- however, iran is a serious wild card here. that brand of terrorist-supporting extreme nationalism could potentially negate all gains here through simple state subsidy and exploitation of the victimage mechanism (particularly jews; this upcoming "holocaust conference" in iran is not pointless).

very interesting indeed. I suspect that we've been far more effective than we'd hoped.

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frikkin mountains.

I'm excited for this weekend:
- get to see jim & emily before she heads off to france
- seahawks are playing for the superbowl on sunday
- church!
- solid, undistacted time with God

boo yah.

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"After all, I quite naturally want to live in order to fulfill my whole capacity for living, and not in order to fulfill my reasoning capacity alone, which is no more than some one-twentieth of my capacity for living. What does reason know? It knows only what it has managed to learn (and it may never learn anything else; that isn't very reassuring, but why not admit it?), while human nature acts as a complete entity, with all that is in it, consciously or unconsciously; and though it may be wrong, it's nevertheless alive."
- Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky