Say what you will about our current President (hell, most Americans — especially one of the millions of unemployed Americans — will probably have even worse to say), but calling our next President — our first black President — a “house negro” and invoking the name of Malcolm X to further insult him? Aw, hell naw.
Al-Qaida just pissed off a whole bunch of black folks.
The AP reports Al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri insulted President-Elect Barack Obama in the terror group’s first reaction to his election, calling him a demeaning racial term implying that the president-elect is a black American who does the bidding of whites.
The message appeared chiefly aimed at persuading Muslims and Arabs that Obama does not represent a change in U.S. policies. Al-Zawahri said in the message, which appeared on militant Web sites Wednesday, that Obama is “the direct opposite of honorable black Americans” like Malcolm X, the 1960s African-American rights leader.
Al-Zawahri also called Obama — along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice — “house negroes.”
Speaking in Arabic, al-Zawahri uses the term “abeed al-beit,” which literally translates as “house slaves.” But al-Qaida supplied English subtitles of his speech that included the translation as “house negroes.”
The message also includes old footage of speeches by Malcolm X in which he explains the term, saying black slaves who worked in their white masters’ house were more servile than those who worked in the fields. Malcolm X used the term to criticize black leaders he accused of not standing up to whites.
Oh — no — he — didn’t!
Anger aside for a moment, I believe Al-Qaida’s leaders are realizing what Obama’s election means to the world’s response to their group. They are seeing the crowds of people cheering in the towns, villages and neighborhoods that have long been sources of new recruits for their mission.
They recognize that President Bush and his cowboy diplomacy — which has actually helped Al-Qaida convince young Muslim men around the globe that America is an anti-Muslim nation — they recognize that the cowboy is about to exit the White House and the guy that is replacing him actually had to combat anti-Muslim prejudice to become our new leader.
Those anti-Muslim comments from McCain-Palin supporters were carried all over Middle Eastern television, so the people in those areas know full well what Barack Hussein Obama had to overcome — and the classy manner in which he did overcome — and that inspires them… more than Al-Qaeda’s message of hate.
They know that Obama’s style of inclusion and cooperation means it will not be America alone fighting Al-Qaida and their message of hate and terror.
Obama understands something that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the bunch never did. This is a war, not over land and geography, but over the hearts and minds of the young, restless, poor, and well-armed men living in the Third World.
This is a war over who can inspire. And I’ll put my money on America led by Barack Hussein Obama over Al-Zawahri and Bin Laden any day.
