Michael Moore's movie Fahrenheit 9/11 included a little bit about Al Qaeda's
motivations... Over the last few days I've been doing a bit of related
analytic thinking in relation to the election, and keep coming to a bad
conclusion... Any convincing refutations?

Important preliminary: Remember that insanity and cunning are not exclusive.
(See final note on why the terrorists are assuredly insane.)

The fanatics in Al Qaeda are men of action. But are they interested in the
American election? Everyone else seems to be. But what outcome does Al Qaeda
really want?

The ancient joke was that the kid with a new hammer sees everything as a
nail--but Al Qaeda only has one tool: the terrorist attack. So are you
expecting them to sit around and do nothing? I'm not so optimistic. It seems
to me that Al Qaeda has greatly increased their attacks recently--but not in
America. Is America really that impervious? Or are they only biding their
time for maximum effect?

My guess is that though crazy, Al Qaeda is still cunning enough to
understand that they are not strong enough to destroy America. If BushCo is
right in that claim, then all bets are off, because they're too out of touch
with reality to predict--which probably means they are unstoppable, too.
However, in one of the worst cases I can imagine, where Al Qaeda obtained
the entire nuclear arsenal of Pakistan, that would still be insufficient to
destroy America, though the damage could be horrendous.

So if Al Qaeda has some lesser goal than destroying America, what is it? And
what will they do to pursue that goal? Actually, the last one is a trick
question, since the only thing they can do is attack and murder innocent
people, so the only questions are details like where and when and how to
stop them.

If their goal is to change America's behavior in the Middle East... Well, it
certainly has changed over the last few years. Lots more people are dying,
and much more spectacularly. BushCo is pumping about a billion dollars a
week into the Iraq "project". What are the results? Is Al Qaeda growing or
shrinking? Are the insurgents for or against them? Lots of Iraqis obviously
want the Americans to go home, but the insurgents *are* home, and they
aren't going anywhere...

Anyway, my conclusion keeps coming back to thinking that Al Qaeda will
attack next week. If they want Dubya to remain in the White House, they'll
attack a blue state, perhaps NYC again. If they want to get rid of Dubya, it
will probably be in the red states, with Dallas being high on the list of
targets. Yeah, they're crazy, but they could think that showing how Dubya
has failed to protect America would wise someone up--which only shows how
little they understand the craziness of Americans.

Alternately, they may have a completely different plan... For example, if
UBL is dead, but they want to pretend he isn't, then they could have made a
video where he describes an attack that has just happened--only at the time
when he made the video it was only a planned attack. He could have made a
bunch of those for various planned attacks, and they'll release the one that
they actually manage to execute most accurately in accord with UBL's
prerecorded ramblings.

Al Qaeda doesn't have many options: Attack or do nothing. They don't seem to
like doing nothing...

Note: My definition of insanity includes anyone who is willing to kill
innocent people. I agree that there are conceivable scenarios that could
force a sane person to kill an innocent, but in general I regard this as an
insane course of action. Al Qaeda does it more than BushCo, but I still
regard it as insane.