Friday, October 29, 2004

OBL: Player of the long game

William Gibson (yes, that William Gibson), on the bin Laden tape:

In that light, I can only assume that OBL's new tape is a very clever player's best shot at getting his partner a second term.

I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that OBL fears Kerry any more than Bush. But Kerry can only comprise an unknown, and why allow the other team to introduce an unknown when your familiar power-symbiote has always proven so wonderously adept at doing everything you'd most want him to do?

OBL today is probably a very satisfied, very optimistic man, and if he can skew the last-minute dynamic of the election in Bush's favor, he'll have cause to be all the more satisfied.

And that's the danger, that some crucial percentage of our dimmer, more reactive voters will flash back to 9-11 and the Bush of the bullhorn, the Bush buffeted with the heartbroken grit of Ground Zero, and vote for that -- childishly imagining that such a vote runs counter to the wishes and the needs of OBL, the bearded stickman, the cave-dwelling spider, our new Old Man of the Mountains. Player of the long game.

Yeah, exactly.

We need a President who is more cunning, craftier, and smarter than the Islamist terrorists arrayed against us. Our current President is not.

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