Nice post, Steve, but I don't think Obama's decisions were meant to 'curry favor' in the Middle East. The term means to try to win someone over through flattery. I think he made them based on his campaign promises, which stem from his personal philosophy.

As I read this post, I can't help but think that if you substitute "Republican" for "al Qaeda" and Boehner for Zawahiri, the argument still holds. They both rely on a fear/hate based following. I picture them both sweating a bit when Obama said we would extend an arm to those willing to unclench their fist.

Meanwhile, Medvedev is willing to let Nato move supplies through Russia to Afghanistan. This isn't what either the Republicans or al Qaeda wanted to hear.

Umm, how the hell does anyone from Al Qaeda know what a "house negro" is? This term is fairly unique to American slave culture, though the root concept of house slave vs field slave is obviously older. But it was Malcolm X who raised this specific phrase to the level of cultural visibility.
Now, I'm not trying to tarnish the reputations of those most esteemed Al Qaeda training camps, but I doubt they cover Malcolm X in this depth. I'm more inclined to believe that they're getting their talking points from Rush Limbaugh, or others in the US who are sympathetic to their goals.

The more hysterical al qaeda gets, the less likely they are to attract sympathisers. People who may have seen them as brave fighters will instead come to see them as hysterical screaming mimis. If you can undermine their recruiting, you've reduced their threat. Getting them to do that themselves is all the better.

The torrent of hateful words is part of what [political] experts now believe is a deliberate, even desperate, propaganda campaign against a president who appears to have gotten under [Limbaugh's] skin.

Moral authority...

Mr. Benen reports the turning of an international tide. What about domestically? Do we see any sea changes here? Yes. In fact the very same thing. The Obama effect is driving the Limbaughs of the world into increasing hostile and isolated enclaves.

Put more analytically:

The temperature of hate-speech increases as the relevancy of the cause decreases.

Put more folksy:

Cockroaches will behave far more animated when they are all swept into the same corner.

And finally, a journalist is able to state conclusively - and factually - what a gift Bush was to al Quaeda. He not only played right into their hands, but also swelled their ranks considerably.

Heckuva job, Bushie!

Ayman al-Zawahiri couldn't properly interpret a single page of the Q'uran if a life-sized cartoon of the Prophet jumped off the front page of the Washington Times and smacked him on the ass with it.

Obviously, since Obama is a Muslim who pals around with terrorists, al Queda's anti-Obama diatribes are totally bogus, and designed to provide cover for his nefarious jihadism about to be unleashed on us all.

(That's about as ludicrous a yarn as I could come up with but I betcha there are already wingnuts spinning it.)

What Damp said. Have you looked at some Repub blogs lately? Even more unhinged than normal.

Yes, it's more fun than ever to mess with their heads now.

Getting them to do that themselves is all the better.

Hmm. And Rush Limbaugh wants an Obama Presidency to fail. Wasn't this the guy that spent the last few years castigating "liberals" for supporting terrorists by not supporting Bush? Sounds like Rush is now in bed with al Qaeda. Why does this drug-addicted pedophile hate America?

Obama election helping against Al Qaeda ... just the opposite of what Repubs told us, no surprise.

Wow, what a change. I haven't stopped by here for a year or two. What ever happened to that mild-mannered, middle-aged guy from Orange County who used to manage this site?

After Vietnam the Army assigned a colonel, Harry G. Summers, jr., to write a history of the war, not for the general public, but for the military. The ideas was the Army might actually learn from history and not make the same mistakes.

One surprising finding was there never was a "Viet Cong." The name was coined by the U.S. State Department so that those fighting the rotten, U.S.-backed S. Vietnam government wouldn't be seen as the "Viet Minh," which the Vietnamese looked on much as Americans do the patriots of the American Revolution.

The Army's official history states quite openly there never was a "Viet Cong," — that it was a proganda term — yet 30-some years later most Americans still believe we were fighting something called the "Viet Cong," not the forces of a national army.

I post the following from time to time, just so down the road I can have bragging rights as to how smart I am, and also how clairvoyant: There is not now, nor has there ever been an Al Qaeda.

Lots of others have said this too, but even "experts" like Juan Cole continue to use "Al Qaeda" because it's useful.

I've heard lots of origins for the name, the more believable being it was the database (Al Qaeda can be a database as well as any other kind of base.) kept by the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia with info on possible fire-brands who might be recruited to fight the Russians in Afghanistan.

Obviously some people now known as terrorists were then on the Al Qaeda database as possible freedom fighters.

As Glenn Greenwald has said, the spoon-fed media pretend Al Qaeda is a multinational corporation with organizational charts, branch offices and business cards, not a thousand different groups with some goals in common.

And business cards - don't forget those. How do you think they found out about that second in command of Al Queda in Yemen?

This is one reason Obama must be doubly vigilent. bin Laden would gain a great deal if he could stage another major event inside the U.S.

What ever happened to that mild-mannered, middle-aged guy from Orange County who used to manage this site?

He's over here.

It's not that Obama is trying much at all to counteract or foil AQ, it's that for reasons many of us could never fathom, Bush did almost exactly what AQ wanted him to do.

Bush must have been getting terrible advice on this, and we know that Richard Clarke was not only alarmed by Bush's inaction in 2001 prior to 911, but astonished by what he decided to do after 911. He equated invading Iraq after 911 to the US invading Mexico after Pearl Harbor. It was just completely the wrong thing to do, and exactly what AQ said Bush would do.

Obama is returning us to our more historical position where we are generally admired and respected by much of the world. This makes the attack propaganda put out by AQ look like the scribbling from nut jobs. It's difficult to convince people to do terrorists attacks on the US when people are actually much more interested in moving themselves and their family to the US to live.

I'm not implying that the are not a whole lot of hard working people who protected us from terrorists attacks, there are, and they have been for the most part, very successful at keeping us safe, but Bush created MANY MORE terrorists than he ever caught (think orders of magnitude on this number), and this had made the job of protecting our country MUCH more difficult.

Al Qaida's business model has always been a week one - it's success is predicated on there being an idiot inside the White House.

Sooner or later there easy glide of a ride would come to an end. Worse still for them is a very bright guy is possibly the most appealing person possible to the Muslim world, short of being a Muslim himself.

So, yeah, they've got reason to panic.

5 years from now Al Qaida will be a faint memory.

It will be remembered as a phenomina of the Bush age, as a protege of the Bush Administration to which they held a mutually supporting symbiotic relationship.

A few adjustments are all that are necessary to normalizing the relationship between the Muslim World and the Modern World - and Obama is as well placed as anyone to figure out what those adjustments are and fixing them.

Can we get Richard Clarke a job in the new administration?