The Obama Effect

Al Qaeda is forced to resort to racist attacks.

That's exactly right. It's easy to forget how much of the world personalizes foreign policy. (Americans, of course, are no exception.) With an American president as loathed as George W. Bush around the world, it's easy for Al Qaeda to portray the U.S. as venal and stupid and brutish as he's proven. Obama complicates the narrative significantly: the very color of his skin, precisely what Al Qaeda mocks, symbolizes America's willingness to change. That's exactly what Al Qaeda fears most.

That's why I kind of disagree with my friend Eric Martin of Obsidian Wings when he writes, "for no apparent reason, Zawahiri leads al-Qaeda directly into that headwind with a racial insult that serves little ideological purpose." The racial epithet is a botched way of advancing a deep ideological necessity for Al Qaeda: to keep its narrative going, Zawahiri has to define Obama as not authentically American. As guest-poster RockRichard puts it, "It flies in the face of their portrayal of an evil zionist empire."

The Obama Effect