Bin Laden and the Black Knight

Posted by Mark Radulich on 01.24.2006

If the bin Laden tape isn’t a Monty Python moment I don’t know what is.

All weekend I received e-mails and comments asking me for my opinion of the new tape put out by Osama bin Laden in conjunction with Al Jazeera News. My first answer was, "Well it's catchy and it's got a beat I can dance to." (Cue rim shot)

But seriously folks, I don't pay too much attention to these bin Laden sightings. After 4 plus years of this nonsense, I feel about UBL (as the CIA calls him) much the same way I feel about certain elders in my family; stop with the constant updates and just tell me when he's dead (long story).

I can only assume that the big thrill in this particular message is the much-ballyhooed "truce" he's offered the West. In case you've missed it:

We don't mind offering you a long-term truce on fair conditions that we adhere to. We are a nation that God has forbidden to lie and cheat. So both sides can enjoy security and stability under this truce so we can build Iraq and Afghanistan, which have been destroyed in this war. There is no shame in this solution, which prevents the wasting of billions of dollars that have gone to those with influence and merchants of war in America who have supported Bush's election campaign with billions of dollars -- which lets us understand the insistence by Bush and his gang to carry on with war.

There are two sides to this "truce" offer in the United States. One side says that we should never give up and fight the terrorists to the death, no matter what the cost. As they say on the Fox News Weekend financial shows, you cannot measure the cost of freedom in bullets and body bags. In the minds of the people on this side, led by our president, George W. Bush, you can never give up, call a truce or negotiate with cold-blooded killers. These are the people that look at how we handled Vietnam and then scream with all of their breath, "Never again!"

The other side does not even see bin Laden as a terrorist. He and his followers are simply responding to years upon years of occupation by Western/Zionist forces. They are taking back the lands and the funds that were stolen by "imperialistic" Western regimes and the international lending institutions and corporations that they secretly work for. The folks in this camp would not only like to accept bin Laden's call for a truce, but would also pay reparations to him and all Muslim countries that the West has unjustly molested since the end of World War I. These are the people that look at how we handled Vietnam and then scream with all of their breath, "Never again!"

(Yes I purposely repeated myself, figure it out history majors)

The problem here is that both sides are wrong. There is no "truce" to accept or reject for any reason – good, bad, or indifferent. The only person that can offer a truce is the leader of an army. People can find all the reasons in the world to justify terrorism or at the very least, anti-Americanism, but none of those justifications make Osama bin Laden a general of armies. The most generous descriptions of him have painted UBL as more of a CEO of a company that specializes in raising funds and training people to murder civilians. He was a spiritual leader of vast amounts of people for sure and he absolutely was part of the leadership that eventually led to a series of attacks on American soil and propriety culminating with 9/11.

But so what?

Neither Jerry Falwell nor Steve Jobs can declare war or offer truces and both command large bodies of people. UBL was closer to both of those individuals than he was a leader of armies. He has no country, no diplomatic rights and in reality, no protection or rights under the Geneva Conventions. It's a nice offer and all but not one he can legally or logically make. Unfortunately, we couldn't even accept a truce from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq if we wanted to and he's currently a bigger than the topper of charts UBL. Once again, there is no real legal foundation for a formal truce with a bunch of angry nuts running around with bombs strapped to their hairy chests.

But let's assume there was; just how exactly would UBL secure that truce? How would he keep his followers from just blowing it off and continuing to blow stuff up? It's nice that according to him and his followers, "We are a nation that God has forbidden to lie and cheat," but somehow I am inclined to believe that that sentiments rings hollow for a crowd that uses children as walking bombs. His former country of Saudi Arabia states by law, a man can marry a girl as young as 9-years-old. Maybe it's the social worker in me but that right there is clear indicator that maybe we're not dealing with the swiftest bunch.

For the last couple of years, since at least the fall of the Taliban but definitely since 2003, most terrorism analysts have said that UBL has lost command and control of al Qaeda. As I recall, in one of the earlier UBL releases, he gave permission to his field commanders to operate with autonomy and to go ahead and blow up what they wished. To my recollection, that is still going on to this day. Not to mention, though they are described as "dangerous," al Qaeda, with or without bin Laden is no longer the murderous global threat it once was.

According to the general manager of Al -Arabiya television, Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, "Bin Laden does not hold anymore the keys of Al-Qaeda's armies, which have been cloned, and he and the other leaders have become mere commentators on their major events, which they hear about from the media like everyone else."

He continues by stating that, "The new field commanders, like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq or Al-Qahtani in Afghanistan, do not belong to or know Bin Laden or Al-Zawahiri and sometimes do not heed their orders, including the public ones, as was the case in the public verbal dispute between the command of the Land of the Two Rivers and Al-Zawahiri when the latter denounced the bombings of civilians and the targeting of the Shiites and the former responded by rejecting his orders and continues to bomb to this day."

And finally, "Bin Laden's truce cannot be taken seriously, particularly in view of his difficult position. He is moving from one hideout to another, unable to use telephones, and fears the treachery of his host everywhere he goes. His long absence and being content with a badly recorded single cassette confirm his isolation from the world apart from commenting on the news."

So ostensibly, here we have a man who is stuck. He has no arms and no legs and yet he defiantly and with relish calls into the winds to his superior opponent, "Alright, we'll call it a draw!"

If the bin Laden tape isn't a Monty Python moment I don't know what is.