Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Austen IvereighNovember 19, 2008

The sneering video letter issued by Al Qaeda’s No. 2 proves, if nothing else, that the Islamist terror network is running scared of Barack Obama.

And so they should be: Obama’s commitment to withdraw troops from Iraq and focus them on Afghanistan smashes the central Al-Qaeda thesis that the US seeks to occupy oil-rich Arab lands. But more to the point, his election proves that American democracy is not the sham al-Qaeda claims it to be. If the son of an African man, schooled in Indonesia, can rise from almost nowhere, challenge his own party’s machine and be elected US president on a ticket of change and reform, then democracy really is as described on the packet, not a plaything of money interests. 

So while the video rather desperately tries to undermine Obama’s undoubted popularity on the Arab street, it succeeds only in exposing Al-Qaeda as racists with a twisted view of the world. Suddenly, it feels as if the West is beginning to triumph over Al-Qaeda.

It’s a sobering thought -- but for anyone who reads the Gospels not an unsurprising one -- that the election of Barack Obama is as effective a riposte to 9/11 as the war in Iraq was a disastrous one. In the minds of angry Muslims across the world, the Iraq war has seemed to prove the Al-Qaeda thesis. The election of Obama now spectacularly disproves it.

Thinking of what each has involved -- the astonishing destructiveness of the war, the tidal wave of hope and solidarity of the election -- it becomes clearer that means and ends are much the same thing. Peace does not come through violence; order is not secured by disorder; you don’t get to the Promised Land by burning up the fields of its neighbours. Or as Jesus rhetorically asked: "How can Satan drive out Satan?"

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
16 years 7 months ago
Do not be deceived or fooled by Al-Qaeda. Evil is very deceptive.

The latest from america

This week on “Jesuitical,” Zac and Ashley chat with Christopher White about his new book, ‘Pope Leo XVI: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy.’
JesuiticalJune 30, 2025
Kerry Weber, incoming president of the Catholic Media Association, and executive editor of America Magazine, speaks June 26, 2025, during the Catholic Media Conference in Phoenix. (OSV News photo/Bob Roller)
Kerry Weber is an executive editor for America. On May 20, 2025, the Catholic Media Association announced that she was elected president,
Grace LenahanJune 30, 2025
"The whole church needs fraternity, which must be present in all of our relationships, whether between lay people and priests, priests and bishops, bishops and the pope," he said during his homily at Mass on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul June 29.
Many aspects of Pope Francis’ remarkable program of ecclesial renewal weare prefigured in Hans Urs von Balthasar’s vision for the church.
Travis LaCouterJune 27, 2025