After scary old Al-Zawahri’s cameo last night on the evening news, several bloggers have made an interesting observation: besides being a blood-thirsty terrorist, Mr. Al-Zawahri is a plagiarist.
“Anybody else find it curious,” asks Protein Wisdom, a conservative blog, “that Ayman Al-Zawahri, one of the leaders of a medievalist death cult bent on reestablishing the caliphate and spreading Shari?a law at the tip of a sword, is on tape talking about a ‘war for oil’ and likening the US campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq to Vietnam? I mean, you’d think he’d be more interested in, say, Andalusia and the Crusades.
“Not that I’m suggesting Zawahiri’s comments were influenced by Western politicos and their partisan political mouthpieces in the media who?ve shown a tendency to provide al Qaeda with rhetorical cover, mind you. Such an argument is just a silly wingnut fantasy, after all–a desperate attempt by chickenhawks to divert blame from the real reasons for terrorist grievances (namely, that we’re stealing their oil and fighting an illegal Vietnam-type war, to name just two…).”
Protein isn’t the only blogger who’s noticed the derivative nature of Al-Zawahri rhetoric. Brendan O’Neill of Spiked Online also accuses Ayman A-Zawahri of being a rip-off artist who is “only parroting what’s been said on a thousand lefty blogs since 7/7.”
O’Neill suggests:
“Someone should have Ayman al-Zawahri, lieutenant to Osama bin Laden, done for plagiarism. There?s nothing remotely original in his statement about the London attacks. Instead he has ripped off sentiments already expressed by scaremongering politicians and in handwringing newspaper editorials here in Britain since the 7/7 attacks. He?s only doing what al-Qaeda bosses have consistently done since 9/11: taking the West?s own fear and loathing and throwing it back at us in a supposedly scary, finger-wagging statement to camera.”
(Many thanks to Instapundit for linking to these gems.)