Smart analysis from Holman Jenkins in today’s Opinion Journal (subscription-only political daily of the Wall Street Journal):

Osama bin Laden may not be a shrewd judge of the U.S. ear, but he does think long-term. His latest video, full of Marxist-sounding rhetoric against capitalism and global warming, is manifestly an attempt to link up with the other concerns that motivate his natural allies in the antiwar movement. No, the likes of MoveOn, the Daily Kos and Al Gore won’t be swearing allegiance to OBL anytime soon. But think how it plays to his adherents.

The U.S. media and political culture is a giant biofeedback machine for terrorists. It’s the stuff on which their enthusiasm and martyrdom feeds. No one doubts, for instance, that Al Qaeda’s activity in Iraq is aimed directly at the U.S. war debate.

Yet Osama must perceive ahead of many Americans that the “Saigon moment” in Iraq won’t be coming — a precipitous collapse of the U.S. effort that al Qaeda could proclaim as victory. Indeed, Iraq is fading as a source of noise and division that bin Laden’s volunteer armies can feed on. By invoking the fight against global capitalism and climate change, he’s trying to tap a new source of media heat, giving his followers a continued sense of relevance and consequence to keep attracting recruits who are literally dying to be on television in a big cause. (That’s especially true of his Western converts, as witnessed in Britain and Germany recently.)

Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East expert, says the video is an expression of “confidence” by bin Laden in engaging the “war of ideas” in the West. The claim of confidence is doubtful, but lacking any real military power, Osama’s battlefield has always been the media. It will become only more so after Iraq.

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