Bin Laden Tape Won't Transform Arab Opinion

TIME.com: The Bush administration's primary objective in releasing the new bin Laden tape may have been to decisively sway Arab public opinion — many in the Arab world had doubted bin Laden's guilt. The tape certainly puts bin Laden's involvement in the September 11 plot beyond doubt, but will it change Arab public opinion towards America?

Scott MacLeod: Arab public opinion has gone through a number of different phases since September 11. The first phase was denial that Arabs or bin Laden had anything to do with the terror attacks. And it was somewhat paradoxical, because some of the more radical Arabs actually supported the action and wanted to believe bin Laden and the people around him had done it.

Still, most were saying "Don't let this be an Arab" when the attacks happened. Even for those that wanted to see America punished, there's an element of shame involved in killing thousands of civilians to make a point. It's something of a humiliation for them that stooping so low is the only way that Arabs could strike back at their enemies. And, of course, they didn't want the U.S. to retaliate against Arabs. So while many people were not-so-secretly happy that the attack happened, they didn't want to admit that very openly, because it reflected badly on their people.

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The second phase ran from the beginning of U.S. air strikes to the collapse of the Taliban. During that phase, the issue of bin Laden's guilt or innocence was simply shelved in Arab public opinion, and the discussion focused simply on America bombing Afghanistan and the civilian casualties. But once the Taliban started collapsing, you had a third phase: There was a clear shift in Arab public opinion towards denouncing the Taliban and bin Laden as bad representatives of Islam, and that the September 11 attackers were bad guys. American prestige began to rise and bin Laden's to fall. Clearly there are more people prepared to think that maybe America had a point, and maybe they can get bin Laden though what they're doing in Afghanistan. And also that maybe bin Laden isn't such a brave defender of Islam, after all. There's been much more criticism of bin Laden and his brand of Islam recently.

Arab opinion was quite horrified by the civilian casualties and the prison massacre at Mazar-i-Sharif, but the focus is on concrete results. In the Arab world, there is a great amount of respect for winners. The progress of the war is giving America more benefit of the doubt. Releasing this tape at a point when Bin Laden is about to be hunted down is not going to do him any good. It may not in itself have an overwhelming impact on Arab public opinion, but it will accelerate the decline of his prestige. And the evidence it offers will be welcomed by those Arab governments that have been cooperating with the U.S. effort.

It has to be said, though, that while American prestige has increased significantly in the eyes of Arabs as a result of the fall of the Taliban and the hunt for Bin Laden, deep suspicions remain over America's agenda. And it has not been helped by what Arabs regard as a negative American position on the Israeli-Palestinian violence. So the tape won't have a kind of "eureka" effect in turning around Arab public opinion, particularly in light of the crisis in Palestinian territories which is getting far more coverage in the Arab world than Afghanistan is right now.

On the tape, the Saudi sheikh tells bin Laden that the events of September 11 dramatically increased support for al Qaeda among like-minded people in the Arab world. He says something to the effect that "even people who were skeptical of you are now rushing to join you," to which Bin Laden replies with a quote about how people will always choose the stronger horse over the weaker one. That suggests bin Laden must be feeling the pressure now to strike again to show his supporters that he's not beaten, and also on the U.S. to capture or kill him…

Figures like bin Laden live or die by their deeds. They get a tremendous amount of prestige, followers, recruits, money and support when they're seen to be out there performing. That was working for him over the past three years, now it's working against him. If he's being hunted like a wounded animal, some potential supporters will turn away from him. One of the U.S. government's motivations for tracking him down is to break his prestige, and his ability to attract people and motivate people.

Remember, bin Laden had been a non-entity in the Arab world before August 1998. And it wasn't the embassy bombings that put him on the map, it was the fact that the U.S. declared war on this one man, firing missiles onto two continents in a bid to kill him. That gave him an irresistible mystique in the eyes of many young Muslim radicals, and boosted his prestige. If he survives the war in Afghanistan, his prestige would grow. But if he's captured or killed, his bravado will seem hollow.

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