Osama Bin Posin'?

Juan Cole has an excellent piece on the Al-Jazeera tape of "bin Laden" from this past weekend, which has Bin Laden, or a fake, taking credit for the failed Christmas Undie-Bomber plot. He ain't buying it:

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assert two things about the audio. First, I do not think it is genuine. Second, I think it demonstrates that Bin Laden, whether he is dead or alive, is now irrelevant.

Nothing about this 'message' smells right.

The audio's claim that Bin Laden was behind the Christmas day bombing is dubious. The modus operandi of Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab bore no resemblance to that of Bin Ladin's al-Qaeda. Bin Laden plans operations for years beforehand; attempts to arrange for simultaneous large attacks or attacks on symbolic targets; and uses teams. One guy hastily recruited in an amateurish attempt that only blows up his own crotch? That isn't al-Qaeda.

All the police work so far in the public record points to Yemen as the place Abdulmutallab was radicalized, trained and equipped for this mission. Bin Laden has no command and control capabilities in Yemen, and that his father hailed from there before moving to Saudi Arabia in the early 20th century is irrelevant. "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" is 300 guys holed up in isolated Maarib in Yemen. Bin Laden has no means to communicate with them (he no longer uses cell or satellite phones because the US can trace them). AQAP already announced that it was behind the Christmas bomb plot, and it wouldn't be like the real Bin Laden to upstage them.

Basically, if Bin Laden is alive, he might as well be dead, because this audio-tape taking credit for a failure that is someone else's would be about as low as it is possible to get.

This isn't to discount Al-Qaeda, such as it is. Or even to say he isn't alive and well, and tolerating someone faking his image to take credit for stuff that is just lame so long as he can stay underground for a little while longer, safe and sound. Also, the mention of Gaza is kind of fail--

What does international terrorism mean in context--what has it ever done, whether inside or outside of Israel or the surrounding territory? In other words--

Does it help? Or does it just make the cause seem less legitimate?

I know it might not be a great parallel to point out Gandhi and MLK, but they saw progress in their lifetimes. Is violence helping Palestine? Is encouraging it worthwhile? Is attacking nightclubs or embassies or random airplanes actually a persuasive statement that encourages change--or just a damn shame, a horror-show, a tragedy?

The tactics of Bin Laden, even when they worked, are failures because they can only terrorize, not convince. I also have my doubts this is really him, but it would serve him right if he was just biting off of the AQAP group to still be relevant--and still failing.