Playing to your ennemies...

All right, I guess I'm becoming a big fan of this guy Reza Aslan... I suppose it comforts me to hear someone who obviously knows more than I do about all this stuff validate exactly the conclusions my feeble mind intuits...

Here he is reviewing the latest collection of al-Qaida "writings" for Slate.

The Al Qaeda Reader. - By Reza Aslan - Slate Magazine

His main point concerning most of al-Qaeda's pointed rants about the west (and more specifically the U.S.) is that...

They are a means of weaving local and global resentments into a single anti-American narrative, the overarching aim of which is to form a collective identity across borders and nationalities, and to convince the world that it is locked in a cosmic contest between the forces of Truth and Falsehood, Belief and Unbelief, Good and Evil, Us and Them.

...and the incisive conclusion:

In the end, this is the most important lesson to be learned from these writings. Because, if we are truly locked in an ideological war, as the president keeps reminding us, then our greatest weapons are our words. And thus far, instead of fighting this war on our terms, we have been fighting it on al-Qaida's.

Don't believe me? Ask Bin Laden:

Bush left no room for doubts or media opinion. He stated clearly that this war is a Crusader war. He said this in front of the whole world so as to emphasize this fact. … When Bush says that, they try to cover up for him, then he said he didn't mean it. He said, 'crusade.' Bush divided the world into two: 'either with us or with terrorism' … The odd thing about this is that he has taken the words right out of our mouths.

Odd, indeed.