INSTAPUNDIT

After reading the transcript of bin Laden’s sickening discourse with his fellow religious lunatics, a couple of things strike me. The first is that anyone who doubts the genuineness of this man’s faith, the inextricability of a twisted fundamentalist Islam with this form of terror, is simply in denial. The second thing that’s obvious is that the only thing bin Laden respects is power. Notice how he predicts that there will be mass conversions to Islam after the massacre. He believes that people, especially those in his own backyard, suck up to the powerful – and that this is the critical battle in his region. He directly rebuts Western nonsense about the Arab street being enraged by any exercise of American power in the Middle East. In fact, bin Laden proves that the best form of persuasion in that part of the world is not rhetorical but military. Pummel them and they will respect you. Talk to them nicely and you’ll end up like Robert Fisk. Best of all, pummel them and then talk. The most persuasive piece of rhetoric yet unleashed in this conflict has been the daisy cutter bomb. It’s the only argument that much of this clearly depraved culture actually respects. And when bin Laden is dead or captured, his hold on the imagination in that part of the world will collapse.