Has bin Laden Become Irrelevant?

With the news on Sunday that Osama bin Laden has released another audio tape with new threats and missions for his followers, I get this feeling that western society simply shrugged it off and collectively said, in bored teenage fashion, "whatever".

It's this type of reaction that puzzles me:

"My initial impression is he is clutching at straws," said Michael Chandler, former head of the United Nations unit on counterterrorism. "If he really wants to show leadership, the way you show leadership is to show yourself. So why haven't we had a videotape?"

Now, perhaps "the way you show leadership" in the western world is to have your face plastered all over the teevee, but to claim that this new audiotape is any less a worthy propaganda tool by the master terrorist than a videotape might have been completely misses the point. Then again, we westerners tend to focus obsessively on the power of appearances, image and media flash, so maybe Mr Chandler is simply expressing what many would agree with.

Regardless, whether bin Laden uses smoke signals or a message in a bottle, he is communicating with his base on four very important issues: 1) the situation in Sudan; 2) western opposition to the Hamas-led Palestinian government; 3) a broader recognition that he holds the people, not just governments, responsible for the war in Iraq and 4) the Danish cartoon controversy. As a communicator, the fact that he has gotten the message out to his followers about his thoughts on these issues ought to be of paramount importance, not whether he showed his face on a video or not.

The White House reaction? "the Al Qaeda leadership is on the run and under a lot of pressure."

Whatever happened to "he can run, but he can't hide"? Maybe they finally realize that he can actually do both and has been doing so for years - long after Bush gave up on him. It doesn't seem like bin Laden is under that much pressure to me.

Michael Scheuer offers a different, more realistic reaction:

Michael Scheuer, former chief of the Central Intelligence Agency's bin Laden unit, said the segments of the tape he had read about suggested that Mr. bin Laden "is at the top of his game" largely because of America's own foreign policy. "We cut off Hamas after we had a fair election," he said. "It looks like we are going to intervene in another Muslim country with oil, in Sudan; we followed Israel's lead with Hamas. His most important ally is American foreign policy."

Westerners seem to have fallen into "the boy who cried wolf" mindset with bin Laden, but we all ignore him at our peril. It's well known that al Quaeda often takes years between major attacks on western interests and, when you have an American president who seems to have almost given up on the hunt for the most wanted man in the world, it's no surprise that bin Laden propaganda is met with a collective shrug. His influence has been downplayed before, but there is no indication that his words are not still the driving force behind the very real possibility that another huge terrorist attack could be coming at any time.

Will we all look back at some future point and then finally concede that we had once again been warned and chose to ignore it?

"Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I--I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him."
- George W Bush, 2002