Well wadda ya know

It seems that the widely-respected Juan Cole of Informed Comment agrees with my assessment of the significance of the latest Osama bin Laden tape.

On Tuesday, I responded to "expert" claims that the tape showed bin Laden felt "secure" and engaged in a "savvy" bit of "positioning" by dubbing Abu al-Zarqawi his "prince" in Iraq. I said (edited somewhat) that

[i]t's easy to see what Zarqawi gets out of this. But what does bin Laden get? He gives a rival legitimacy, he ties himself to a figure even more divisive than he is, he labels a significant portion of Iraqis "infidels" - where is the "savvy positioning" in this?

I think this declaration is not a sign of bin Laden's media savvy or sense of security. I think it's a sign of his weakness, a sense that he is out of the loop, that he is in fact becoming "Osama bin Forgotten." He's not trying to keep the initiative, he's trying to regain it - and I don't mean the initiative against the US, I mean in leadership battles among violent Islamic fundamentalists.

It turns out that the morning of the same day, Dr. Cole was saying much the same. Rather than extensively quote the post, which I hope you'll read in full, I'll just note that he declared that "Zarqawi is widely hated in Iraq" and that bin Laden's "hamfisted and clumsy" intervention in Iraqi affairs, labeling Shiites who support the election (which would include Ali al-Sistani) "infidels," succeeds only in "mak[ing] himself look ridiculous." He ends by saying that

[t]he narrow, sectarian and politically unskilfull character of this speech is the most hopeful sign I have seen in some time that al-Qaeda is a doomed political force, a mere Baader-Meinhof Gang or Red Army Faction with greater geographical reach.

Well, you know what they say: GMTA.