James Taranto, "Best of the Web," Wall Street Journal
Today, when America's enemies speak, young liberal journalists cover their ears and go LA LA LA LA LA! When the latest Osama bin Laden video came out last week, the guys at TalkingPointsMemo.com felt it necessary to publish a series of posts saying that everyone really ought to ignore it. . . .
Hmm, the TalkingPointers have certainly spilled a lot of (figurative) ink on a message they claim to think everyone should ignore. But if you look at the transcript of the video, you can see why they so conspicuously do not want anyone to think about what bin Laden is saying. It's certainly true that he--or whoever actually wrote and recited the words on the tape--aims to "sow division." His method of doing so is to espouse a variety of mostly liberal causes.
He seems to view as his natural allies Americans who seek defeat in Iraq and fault congressional Democrats for failing to have brought it about, who loathe "neoconservatives like Cheney, Rumsfeld and Richard Pearle [sic]" and admire the work of Noam Chomsky and Michael Scheuer, who see U.S. military servicemen as chumps, who live in fear of "global warming," and who anathematize capitalism and corporations. In what appears to be a sop to the Ron Paul crowd, he also calls for a flat tax.
It seems both fair and accurate to note that there is a confluence of interests between bin Laden and those Americans who seek defeat in Iraq. It is little wonder that this is an embarrassment to the latter. But it would be unfair and inaccurate to suggest that this is anything more than a de facto tactical alliance. The Angry Left wants America to lose in Iraq for its own ideological and partisan purposes, which have little to do with the establishment of a global caliphate.
So what are we to make of bin Laden's striking a pose as a global warmist who hates capitalism? Here's a theory: Slate reports that by one estimate 10% of al Qaeda's "soldiers in the global jihad" are converts to radical Islamism, a religion/ideology that, as Slate puts it, "has become a magnet for some of the world's angriest people." 
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