More Hope, Less Tragedy in London

Yesterday and today's attempted attacks in London should offer additional hope for the West. Prior to yesterday, al-Qaida could spin its image to be a global organization with Divine guidance that was successfully fighting and bringing down the Western world's superpower in the eyes of the young impressionable youths who are the targets of their recruiting efforts. Usama and company have been very careful with the images and messages they released and have consequently done well in creating the Qaida 'brand' they were seeking to create.

With the recent copy-cat London attempts, however, like the stories of Saddam climbing out of his spider hole to surrender and the pictures of him in his underwear, part of the the al-Qaida illusion has been forever lost. Qaida's agents in this case were very publicly revealed impotent in carrying out their missions when their bombs fizzled rather than exploded. Any teenager can set off fireworks on public transportation lines, this is hardly the hallmark of a Divine army.

More telling is the fact that at least one of the attempted attackers took Qaida cowardice to a new level. By throwing the bomb and running off the train, this would-be attacker showed that not only was he not man enough to fight like an actual soldier in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, he was also too cowardly to carry out his 'martyrdom' mission.

Qaida is either deeper in to their 'B Team' than we previously publicly thought, or they are pressed for recruits to the point where they need their stooges alive to carry out multiple attacks, or their cause has now diluted and mutated to a point where their goal is to indiscriminately kill as many innocent civilians as possible. Either way, the 'pureness' of their 'holy' cause has taken a hit, along with their credibility in the eyes of the Muslim world.