Al-Qaeda doesn't care who wins...

Juan Cole hits the nail on the head this morning:

Al-Qaeda does not care who wins the elections. If the US withdraws from Iraq (which could happen willy-nilly under Bush as easily as under Kerry), that would be seen as a victory by al-Qaeda. If the US remains in Iraq for years, bleeding at the hands of an ongoing guerrilla insurgency, then that is also a victory for al-Qaeda from their point of view. They therefore just don't care which candidate wins.

However, many on the GOP side insist on using the "Kerry is the al-Qaeda candidate" meme--one of their many childish, fear-mongering strategies in this campaign. Anyone with a brain ought to be skeptical whenever this sort of rhetoric comes up. Continuing on:

They [al-Qaeda] hate general US policy in the Middle East, which would not change drastically under Kerry. To any extent that al-Qaeda is giving serious thought to the US elections, it would see no significant difference between the candidates. But given its goal of creating more polarization between the US and the Muslim World, it is entirely possible that the al-Qaeda leadership would prefer Bush, since they want to "sharpen the contradictions."

As I've seen stated in numerous other places, if Kerry wins, we can't expect things to change all that much in terms of foreign policy (except that Kerry will most likely avoid insulting our allies). This is unfortunate--for the rest of the world.

There is still the domestic situation, though, where a Kerry presidency would clearly be superior.