Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s #2, effectively proved his organization’s irrelevance by insulting President-elect Obama in a recently released video.  Zawahiri called Obama,

a demeaning racial term implying that Obama is a black American who does the bidding of whites… (and) said that Obama is “the direct opposite of honorable black Americans” like Malcolm X. He called Obama a “house negro.”… He added that Obama’s plan to shift troops to Afghanistan is doomed to failure, because Afghans will resist.

The audio plays over still pictures of al-Zawahri, Malcolm X praying, and Obama with Jewish leaders at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

The tape also criticizes Obama for his position on Israel, stating that this proves his “stance of hostility to Islam and Muslims”.

Al-Zawahrialso urged Muslims to continue attacks against “criminal America”.

Can you imagine the chaotic PR meeting in the cave on November 5th?  “America just did what?  Elect a black man raised in Indonesia whose middle name is Hussein?!?!?! How are we going to spin this one?”

This video is a propaganda effort with two goals: to provide talking points to al Qaeda supporters and to inflame American public opinion.

Say you’re an al Qaeda supporter and have given your time, money, sons, or sympathies to the group because you believe al Qaeda is an effective counterweight to the Great Satan.  You might begin to doubt America’s Great Satan-ness if the country is so bold as to elect Barack Hussein Obama as its next president. 

What’s more, Obama offers a break from the Bush-era black/white foreign policy.  His proposed policies - negotiation, US troop withdrawal - stand a decent chance at tempering the flames of anti-Americanism within the Middle East.  

So AQ tries to convince you that Obama is no different before he proves he actually is.

On the other side of the coin, the dirty little secret is that Al Qaeda needs an angry America to be relevant.  The group played the Bush administration perfectly by provoking the White House’s ”us-vs-them” mentality that polarized American public opinion against them while driving impressionable Muslim youth into AQ’s fold.   With some 53% of Americans (and rising, I’d imagine) supporting the President-elect, what better way to keep America angry than by calling Obama a “negro”?

But if that’s all they have, AQ is verging on irrelevancy.

UPDATE: This post got a nice mention over at Wired’s Danger Room blog, linked here.

I thought I’d throw a few summaries of the major issue(s) that could prevent Obama from offering Hillary the Secretary of State gig.  With such a powerful and politically sensitive political appointment, there is going to be a lot of positioning in the press, so take any brinkmanship with a grain of salt. 

Also, consider that if the President-elect asks you to do something, it’s a general rule you accept.  It’s a well-worn phrase, but a consistent truism - “I serve at the pleasure of the President.” 

The main issue is vetting, but NBC - via the NYT - says there are reservations within Camp Clinton:

The New York Times writes, “Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has reservations about accepting an appointment as secretary of state in the Obama administration, an adviser to Mrs. Clinton who is familiar with her thinking said on Tuesday. The adviser described Mrs. Clinton as flattered by President-elect Barack Obama’s interest but said she was agonizing over the decision. Mrs. Clinton likes being her own boss and is reluctant to give up the independence that comes with that, said the adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process was at a delicate stage.”

From Politico Read the rest of this entry »

This is a pretty good piece from Al Jazeera in English on the state of the Taliban.  One footsoldier notes, “Obama is the same as Bush.  They are the two biggest infidels.”  You can substitute pretty much whomever else might have won the presidential election and they would have become the second infidel along with Bush.  So much for having a rosy outlook on life…

Late last night, the Guardian newspaper (UK) claimed that Hillary Clinton is about to accept the Secretary of State position:

Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned.

Obama’s advisers have begun looking into Bill Clinton’s foundation, which distributes millions of dollars to Africa to help with development, to ensure that there is no conflict of interest. But Democrats do not believe that the vetting is likely to be a problem.

I’m not sure that a foreign newspaper has the sources to corroborate such a news-making claim, so take this with a grain of salt until it’s official. 

Last night, I was talking to some friends and former colleagues who have since scattered themselves throughout the intelligence community.

I asked if the transition had affected their workload, and was greeted a resounding YES.  I drew two conclusions from the conversation:

1. The IC’s workload was increased because they have had to reset the clock with the Obama folks.  Think what you will about Bush’s national security and foreign policy decisions, but my friends say that he knows the issues of the last eight years down cold.  With Obama, the IC has had to go back to square one and essentially retell the intelligence stories - whether terrorism, international politics, military strategy, economics, etc., etc.. - that Obama just isn’t familiar with.  Therefore, it’s a good thing that…

2. The Bush administration has been extraordinarily helpful to the Obama transition team.  Far from removing the ”O’s”from the keyboards, the Bush team has apparently gone out of its way to ”republish” important analytic products (ie, intelligence briefings and analysis) from his administration.  (”Republish” likely means to recirculate and update older intelligence briefings to Obama’s staff.) 

Considering how hard Obama hit Bush during the campaign, let’s give credit where credit is due - this is no small feat for the Bush team, and they are to be commended.  And at a time with two wars and a major looming financial crisis, let’s hope Bush’s legacy is improved by his eager cooperation during the transition.

A: Today, they’re both essentially unelectable.

Following November 4th’s resounding defeat, the Republican party is headed into a period of political wilderness and soul-searching.  It has to decide whether to tact towards the center, or embrace the stronger base-appealing aspects of its conservative ideology.

Much can be said of France’s Partie Socialiste, or PS.  Things aren’t looking good for the PS centrists, writes Marc Desnoyers at RealClearWorld:

Read the rest of this entry »

For fans of planning national security the “right way,” the Project on National Security Reform is a refreshing step in the right direction.  I’ve written on them before here, and have followed their work over the course of the last year.  The Washington Post picked up on a draft of their final report, officially due out December 2.

From the WaPo:

“The simple truth is that the world for which the [U.S.] national security system was designed in 1947 no longer exists. Today’s challenges require better integration of expertise and capabilities from across the government. . . . Instead, departments and agencies are often working against one another, the White House is unable to make timely and well-informed decisions, and there is an over-reliance on military force.”

That is an excerpt from the introduction to a little-noticed, 648-page collection of national security case studies on events that range from the Allied occupation of Japan in the 1940s to the deployment of foreign troops in Somalia in the 1990s to the ongoing war in Iraq. The report was released seven weeks ago by a nonpartisan group that has studied the way the U.S. national security structure has worked over the past 60 years.

The Project on National Security Reform, financed primarily with $6.4 million from Congress, has employed the talents of 25 former senior national security officials and benefited from the advice of a “guiding coalition” that includes high-ranking officials from past administrations.

…

The study recommends, “At a minimum, over the next five years, the Foreign Service personnel strength of State and USAID should be raised by fifty percent and the entire budget of the State Department and USAID should be doubled, across the board.” Otherwise, they will remain “poor relations of the Pentagon.”

The legislative branch comes in for criticism. Without naming the House and Senate armed services, foreign relations, intelligence and government oversight panels, the study finds, “Committees are organized to oversee individual executive branch departments and agencies, not to supervise interagency mechanisms or multi-agency operations, making accountability for ‘national missions’ a peripheral concern.”

The study notes Congress’s division of authority between committees that authorize spending and those that appropriate money. It criticizes “restrictions on spending and fund transfers,” as well as lawmakers’ “willingness to include significant expenses unrelated to emergency operations in supplemental budget appropriations [that as a result] impede the linking of resources to national security goals and objectives.”