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In May, I wrote the following spoof:
News reports from Pakistan claim a new audiotape from Osama bin Laden speaks favorably about a McCain presidency:
Inshallah, we’re looking forward to four more years of Bush policies with this McCain fellow. George Bush has been good for us and we think McCain could be even better. Imagine, he might even widen the war against us and persuade more shahids to join our cause. McCain, we wish you well in ‘08.
John McCain said he reserved the right to jump into bed with any Christian evangelical and Islamist slimeballs crazy enough to endorse him.
It’s taken six months, but reality has finally caught up with me:
“Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” read a commentary on a password-protected Islamist Web site that is closely linked to Al Qaeda and often disseminates the group’s propaganda.
The endorsement left the McCain campaign sputtering…
With all the Republicans who’ve jumped ship and endorsed Obama, you’d think John would’ve welcomed anyone who jumped on his bandwagon. But this is an endorsement he could do without.
The campaign’s overly-categorical and essentially non-responsive reply exemplifies why McCain is completely out of touch with current political reality:
“The transcendent challenge of our time [is] the threat of radical Islamic terrorism,” Senator McCain said in a major foreign policy speech this year, adding, “Any president who does not regard this threat as transcending all others does not deserve to sit in the White House.”
Yes, he’s been claiming that and lots of other similarly dubious or flat out wrong statements about Islamic radicalism for the entire campaign. But Americans no longer believe it and no amount of repeating it will get them to change their minds (unless Rick Davis, Mark Salter and Steve Schmidt can arrange for an Al Qaeda attack the weekend before the election as Al Qaeda did before a Spanish national election some years ago).
Nicholas Kristof carries his critique to the subject Islamofascism, a coinage inspired by Jewish neocons:
…An exaggerated fear of “Islamofascism” elides a complex reality and leads us to overreact and damage our own interests…
He closes his column by returning to the reason Al Qaeda has “endorsed” McCain:
Al Qaeda militants prefer a McCain presidency: four more years of blindness to nuance in the Muslim world would be a tragedy for Americans and virtually everyone else, but a boon for radical groups trying to recruit suicide bombers.
It has taken eight long years. But Americans have finally begun to regain their senses about the “war on terror” and realized the horrible excesses engineered by the Bush-McCain Republican juggernaut. It will take a lot more than McCain shreying “radical Islamic terrorism” to make them lose their senses again and go for his pandering.
