McCain Scores Major Endorsement

The logic of al-Qaeda's McCain choice
30/10/2008 03:00:00 PM GMT from aljazeera.com

Al-Qaeda says it wants McCain to win because it thinks he is most likely to continue Bush’s ‘war on terror’.
By Ivan Eland

In the battle for endorsements in the presidential campaign, Barack Obama snared a strong nod from former Secretary of State Colin Powell – and John McCain received an equally strong recommendation from al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda? Yes, you read that right, al-Qaeda!

This endorsement indicates what has long been known: al-Qaeda is fairly sophisticated politically. And this doesn’t mean McCain is the more accomplished candidate — in fact, apparently the group believes he is the more gullible of the two men. Quite bluntly, al-Qaeda says it wants McCain to win essentially because it thinks he is most likely to continue Bush’s macho bull-in-the-China-shop “war on terror.” There has been a lot of bull in the China shop, and al-Qaeda wants to make sure it continues.

According to al-Hesbah Web site, which has close ties to the group, “Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election.” The Web site was confident that McCain would continue the “failing march of his predecessor.” The site argued that a terrorist attack could push the election into McCain’s column, and thus lead to an expansion of U.S. military commitments in the Islamic world in an attempt take revenge on al-Qaeda.

The Web site already brags about having lured the Bush administration and the U.S. into a trap that has “exhausted its resources and bankrupted its economy” and expects that to accelerate if the even more hawkish McCain gets elected. Most terrorism analysts would agree that al-Qaeda has successfully duped the Bush administration. Al-Qaeda is betting that McCain is an even bigger stumbling cowboy than Bush. 

With talk of terrorist strikes this close to the election, it is possible that al-Qaeda could be once again trying to influence the outcome. In late October 2004, bin Laden released a video tape several days before the U.S. presidential election that warned of an attack, which John Kerry’s campaign believed tipped the electoral balance against them. Let’s hope that the rhetoric on al-Qaeda’s Web site is just bluster, as in October 2004, rather than turning into an attack, as it did in Spain in March 2004. We want a fair election with no outside interference from evildoers.