Michael Scheuer on Bin Laden's January message

Michael Scheuer talks at some length in this interview about the current threat from Osama bin Laden: Bin Laden's Game Interview by Steve Perry Minneapolis-St. Paul City Pages 02/15/06.

Scheuer is one of the few genuine experts on terrorism in general and on Bin Laden in particular in the United States.  Experts aren't always right, of course.  But I tend to think recent developments sustain his analysis that Bin Laden and Al Qaeda remain a particular threat. But probably more importantly, Al Qaeda has helped spur a more general Sunni jihadist movement in the world.

[P]eople tend to forget ... that when he outlined his aims in 1996, the first one - and it still is the first one - was to incite jihad around the world. He regarded al Qaeda and his role not as an instrument of American defeat, but as an instrument that would incite the jihad that would spur America's defeat. He saw his job as encouraging other groups to join in. Picking a number is kind of a mug's game, but now we have 40 or 50 groups around the world that fight, sometimes locally, but also have an intention of attacking the United States. So in his main goal, of incitement, he's been singularly successful. (my emphasis)

And, according the Scheuer, the Iraq War helped Bin Laden tremendously in that goal:

My own judgment is, as a nation-state [Saddam's Iraq] was probably containable. But our invasion of Iraq broke the back of our counter-terrorism policy, because it validated in the Islamic mind so much of what bin Laden had said through the past decade. He said, Americans will do anything to defeat a strong Muslim government. We took Saddam out. He said we would take on and defeat any Muslim state that threatened Israel. I think Iraq is an indication of that being true, from their perspective. He said we would occupy their sanctities and try to destroy their religion. From the Islamist's perspective, we occupy all three of their sanctities now—the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, and Jerusalem. The Israelis hold Jerusalem, but increasingly in the Islamic world, Americans and Israelis are viewed interchangeably. He said we were going to try to take all the oil from the Muslim world. And certainly the view predominates that one of the reasons we went to Iraq was oil.

And so, in terms of perception, the Iraq war was a validation of what bin Laden had said. In addition, bin Laden and Zawahiri are not trained Islamic clerics or jurists. The argument was always made that they had no authority, therefore, to declare a jihad. Well, when we invaded Iraq, it was kind of a textbook example of an event that necessitates jihad in the Islamic world. Now, any number of well-credentialed clerics and jurists and scholars have authorized jihad against the United States around the world, because we invaded a Muslim land. In my view, the invasion of Iraq accelerated the transformation of al Qaeda from a man and an organization into a philosophy and a movement.

We're at the point where it's still very important to kill - preferably to kill, or else to capture - Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri. But because of Iraq, our problem is far from over if that happens.  (my emphasis)

Scheuer takes Bin Laden's recent threat to attack the United States again very seriously.  "He would not have said what he said if he wasn't prepared to attack us."