Since Osama bin Laden's last tape was all about how world governments weren't acting fast enough on climate change, I expected his latest offering to be similarly topical--like about how that new show Outsourced really sucks and how NBC should bring Parks and Rec back. He's chosen to criticize Pakistan for its handling of the floods in Pakistan that displaced around 20 million people, and hit other Muslim governments for spending too much on their militaries:
"What governments spend on relief work is secondary to what it spends on its armies," bin Laden says on the 11-minute tape called, "Reflections on the Method of Relief Work." The authenticity of the tape could not be immediately verified.
The top al-Qaida leader said a new "well-funded" relief organization should be created to study Muslim regions near bodies of water to prevent future flooding, to create development projects in impoverished regions and to work on farming and agriculture to guarantee food security.
Other high profile al-Qaeda members, like Ayman al-Zawahiri and Adam Gadahn, have also attempted to capitalize on the misery caused by the devastating floods. The problem is, al-Qaeda, unlike Hamas or Hezbollah, has no social service wing. They're really just killers, and no one knows that better than the audience these speeches are meant to convince. Somehow I doubt AQ or any of their affiliates are going to be shifting their resources from planning terrorist attacks to relief work, even as they call on governments in Muslim countries to do so.
Anyway I think we've found another wrinkle in the "American Taliban" thesis--even al-Qaeda terrorists accept climate science.
