One of the most common canards regarding the U.S.–Israel relationship is that American support for Israel is the root cause of al-Qaeda terrorism.  Yesterday, following the release of Osama Bin Laden’s latest recorded statement, CNN’s Peter Bergen regurgitated this causality myth:

So intense are bin Laden’s feelings about the Palestinian issue that, according to the 9/11 commission, he wrote Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational commander of the 9/11 attacks, two letters pressing him to move forward the timing of the attacks on Washington and New York to June or July 2001 to coincide with a planned visit to the White House of Israel’s then-prime minister, Ariel Sharon. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed resisted the pressure.

Apparently, Bergen doesn’t know the difference between an Islamist group that actually champions the Palestinian cause, and one that merely invokes the Palestinian cause to broaden its appeal among Muslims even as it pursues an entirely different agenda.  Indeed, al-Qaeda falls squarely in the latter category, and Bin Laden’s latest statement firmly reinforces this.

Granted, Bin Laden’s statement is titled, “A Call for Jihad to Stop the Aggression on Gaza,” and it references the current fighting in Gaza.  But the statement isn’t really about Gaza.  Rather, Bin Laden’s main point is that his global jihad against the United States is working – and that the Gaza war is only one example of American weakness:

The great and swift decline in America’s influence is one of the most important motivations for Israelis to wage such a barbaric attack on Gaza, in a bid to try and make use of the last days of Bush’s mandate and the neo-conservatives.

In this vein, Bin Laden spends much of the address referencing other examples of America’s supposedly impending defeat, including the expensiveness of the War on Terror and the financial crisis:

[Bush] has left his successor a difficult legacy, and left him one of two bitter choices… The worst heritage is when a man inherits a long guerrilla warfare with a persevering, patient enemy — a war that is funded by usury. If [Obama] withdraws from the war, that would be a military defeat, and if he goes on with it, he’ll drown in economic crisis…

Still, the most telling example of Bin Laden’s relative disinterest in Gaza occurs in the final paragraph.  Here, Bin Laden simply uses the Palestinians to paint a favorable image of his own jihadists, who – as he emphasizes throughout the speech – are fighting America:

My brothers in Palestine, you have suffered a lot, and your fathers before you, for nine whole decades. Muslims sympathize with you, for what they see and hear. We, the Mujahideen, sympathize with you, too, much more than anyone else… Because the Mujahideen lead the same kind of life that you lead; they are bombed the same way you are bombed, from the same airplanes, they lose their children just like you do.

In short, Bin Laden’s overwhelming focus on declaring American weakness and promoting jihad against the United States – in a statement that was supposed to be about Gaza – is quite indicative of his true priorities.  When “experts” such as Peter Bergen claim otherwise, they completely misconstrue the objectives of global jihad groups such as al-Qaeda – and, much to Bin Laden’s delight, muddy U.S. policy options in the process.