BY JAMES TARANTO
Monday, May 7, 2007World's Only Supercower"In a new Internet video, Osama bin Laden's second-in-command jeers at the Iraq war funding bill vetoed by President George W. Bush that called for a U.S. troop pullout in Iraq," Reuters reports:
"This bill will deprive us of the opportunity to destroy the American forces which we have caught in a historic trap," al Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri is quoted as saying on ABC's Web site. . . .
"We ask Allah that they only get out of it after losing 200,000 to 300,000 killed, in order that we give the spillers of blood in Washington and Europe an unforgettable lesson," Zawahri says.
Of course this is bluster. According to this
chart, the total number of coalition combat deaths in the Iraq war stands at 2,968, or 718 a year on average. At that rate, the count would reach 200,000 in the year 2282 and 300,000 in 2421.
Obviously Zawahiri's taunt is a sarcastic one.
He means to call America cowardly, as Osama bin Laden did in a February 2002 interview with Al-Jazeera:
We experienced the Americans through our brothers who went into combat against them in Somalia, for example. We found they had no power worthy of mention. There was a huge aura over America--the United States--that terrified people even before they entered combat. Our brothers who were here in Afghanistan tested them, and together with some of the mujahedeen in Somalia, God granted them victory. America exited dragging its tails in failure, defeat, and ruin, caring for nothing.
America left faster than anyone expected. It forgot all that tremendous media fanfare about the new world order, that it is the master of that order, and that it does whatever it wants. It forgot all of these propositions, gathered up its army, and withdrew in defeat, thanks be to God. He has a point; America does have a yellow streak.
Think of all the politicians and commentators who supported the Iraq war with their votes and words, then switched sides once the going got tough. If opinion polls are to be believed, somewhere between 25% and 40% of the public did the same.
Whatever his faults, President Bush has been steadfast; and our guess is that the next president, even if a Democrat, will realize that cutting and running would be disastrous, and thus will either defy public opinion or help to change it. But if America conducted foreign policy by plebiscite, it seems likely we would already have fled Iraq.
If America is irresolute, al Qaeda is cowardly in its own way--which is to say, dastardly. While Zawahiri boasts about his ambition to attack U.S. soldiers,
his followers appear to be targeting little girls, as CNN reports:
American soldiers discovered a girls school being built north of Baghdad had become an explosives-rigged "death trap," the U.S. military said Thursday.
The plot at the Huda Girls' school in Tarmiya was a "sophisticated and
premeditated attempt to inflict massive casualties on our most innocent victims," military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said.
The military suspects the plot was the work of al Qaeda, because of its nature and sophistication, Caldwell said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer.
America's cowardice and al Qaeda's are as different in their origins as in their forms. Ours grows out of strength and comfort; theirs, out of weakness and depravity. Both, however, are dangerous to civilization.
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