To balance out the horror show now unfolding in India, and which the New York Times believes is not the handy work of Al Qaeda, a hopeful sign of fraternal division has emerged from within the ranks of Osama's Murder, Inc. It seems that when Ayman al-Zawahiri referred to the president-elect as a "House Negro" and was subsequently condemned by the international media for it (because everything else he'd got up to in life thus far was pretty humdrum), he incited a minor race war among the jihadim. Evan Kohlmann at the Counterterrorism Blog writes:
Though hardcore Al-Qaida supporters have predictably dismissed any criticism of Dr. al-Zawahiri and are fiercely backing his choice of words, there is a rather ironic (if not entirely unfamiliar) twist to this issue. After observing international press reporting on the incident, these same supporters are now bitterly attacking the media for its "unfair" pro-Obama bias and for deliberately "confusing" the meaning of al-Zawahiri's message.
In related news, Zawahiri's audio statement also appears to have created a palpable, tense confrontation between Al-Qaida and a significant cross-section of African-American Muslims. Several U.S.-based Muslim organizations immediately held press conferences or issued statements to strongly criticize al-Zawahiri and his manipulation of the words of the late Malcolm X. Conversely, these conferences and statements of response have not gone over well within the jihadi community, with some Arabic-speaking commentators issuing angry rants about the apparent treachery of American Muslims, including specifically the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). One Al-Qaida supporter cautioned his quarrelsome online colleagues, "Brothers, this does not apply to all American Muslims. Do not forget our brother [Adam] Yehiye Gadahn, a naturalized Muslim and U.S. citizen."
It's too easy to laugh at the stupidity and confusion of one's enemies. Stalin once made a crack about the RSDLP, before the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, that the minority faction was the one with all the Jews in it and so perhaps what the party really needed was a pogrom. That so many Russian Jews were drawn to revolutionary socialism because of the lethal anti-Semitism of the czars seemed lost on the peasant bandit from Gori, whom Lenin understandably kept away from the arena of public relations and assigned to the less glamorous duties of robbing banks and throwing bombs.
In any case, Al Qaeda has a long road ahead in convincing anyone who bothers to pay attention to its press releases that it is not, inter alia, a racist organization. It condoned and encouraged the janjaweeds' genocide of black Darfuri Muslims, who were killed, raped and dispossessed only because they were black and not Arab.
There is a good chance that Zawahiri's "House Negro" remark was furnished by the aforenamed Adam Gadahn, a homeschooled, death metal aficionado originally from Orange County, who exchanged the nihilism of the head banger for that of the head remover when he moved to Pakistan in 1998 and joined Al Qaeda sometime thereafter. Gadahn is the lackey who lards Osama's seasonal greetings with references to the Green movement and fashionable lefty radicalism. In a parallel universe, he's a harmless but amusing blogger for Comment Is Free, clearly familiar with the writings of Noam Chomsky, William Blum (Osama's favorite author), Robert Fisk and George Galloway, the latter two Gadahn has praised for their "respect and admiration for Islam" and for "acknowledging that it is the truth." And let's not forget that the only other major figure to describe Barack Obama in Uncle Tom locutions was... Ralph Nader. (One pictures young Adam surfing every stateside web portal where the spoiler of the 2000 election is still taken seriously.)
Yet what makes this intramural Qaeda kerfuffle so ironic is that its cause is himself the quinessential wannabe, a pathetic outsider who cozies up to brutish authoritarians and is the first to accuse others of "betrayal." Revelation may be the going term for this pathology in a Waziristan cave, but had he stuck to the infidel provinces California, Gadahn would have heard it called by its proper name: projection.
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