Ahmed Benchemsi, writing for Newsweek, explains why Ayman al Zawahiri went after President-elect Obama in a recent Web message. Zawahiri clumsily denounced Obama as a “house slave” or “abeed al-beit” in Arabic. An English subtitle provided by Al Qaeda’s propaganda arm translates the term as “house Negro.”

Benchemsi wrote:

Al Qaeda and all its followers badly need to perpetuate Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” paradigm. The West and Islam are deadly enemies, in the radicals’ view. The more irreconcilable the former, the happier the latter. In this regard, the agenda of Bush and the neocons was a true blessing for the terrorists.

…Al Qaeda’s true problem with Obama [is] the American president-elect thinks outside of the confrontation box. The radicals just hate that. And above all, they hate the idea of the United States resuming the chase of Al Qaeda operatives in the mountains of the Pakistan-Afghanistan borders. He’s coming to them, how could they not react fiercely?

More immediately, in terms of image, Barack Obama’s election puts a friendly face on America again for the vast majority of Muslims. Everyone knows his religion is Christianity, but his father’s Islamic heritage offers hope that Obama will know how to put an end to President Bush’s dumb “Global War On Terror.”

Zawahiri’s video message targeted this specific point: “Obama is not a Muslim, he’s a renegade who abandoned his ancestor’s religion to embrace the ‘crusaders faith’ and the ‘Zionists’ ideology’,” Zawahiri suggests. The genuine message being: please don’t like him!

Well, too bad for them: we do. We will like him more, of course, if he keeps his promise of backing out of Iraq within 16 months and putting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process back on track.

Ayman al-Zawahiri devised al-Qaeda’s thus-far successful strategy of provoking war between the USA and Muslim countries, while Osama bin Laden and company mostly avoided the fight themselves. Think about it– Bush declared war on them in 2001 and al-Qaeda is more numerous and capable now than ever before.

We are now approaching another turning point, when our side will finally regain the initiative and al-Qaeda starts losing.