Where does Osama bin Laden stand on gay marriage? What are his views on the privatization of Social Security and stem cell research? Is he concerned about judges who place their personal opinions ahead of the Constitution? Or does he care more about corporations that outsource good American jobs to foreign countries?
As you may or may not have noticed, we're suddenly having a national debate about who Bin Laden and Al Qaeda support for president. Fair enough. Bin Laden's opinion, if only we could know it, would probably affect the judgment of fellow voters more than that of any other independent thinker except, of course, John McCain. So far, the Bin Laden debate has been pretty one-sided, with a string of Republican public officials claiming that terrorists are rooting for Kerry, and some bloggers and a columnist or two suggesting that he may prefer Bush.
My favorite among the Republican mind readers is House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, who said last week, "I don't have data or intelligence to tell me one thing or another," which is an assertion that no one will disagree with. But he continued, saying that Al Qaeda "would be more apt to go [for] somebody who would file a lawsuit with the World Court or something rather than respond with troops."
Like many Americans, Hastert seems to be confusing Bin Laden with Saddam Hussein. This is a confusion the Bush administration and his campaign wish to encourage, and the president himself may even share. To describe John F. Kerry's position on Iraq as "file a lawsuit" is merely witless and unfair. To describe his position on Bin Laden that way is mystifying.
In fact, the administration's response to Sept. 11 -- focusing on Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with it -- might well be a point in the president's favor as Bin Laden sits in his cave studying documents from the League of Women Voters and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, trying to make up his mind.
If there is one thing we knew about Bin Laden before the start of the Iraq war, it was that he wasn't in Iraq. With the invasion of Iraq, Bin Laden got all the benefits of being America's public enemy No. 1, but none of the disadvantages.
