Turning the world back to the 12th century, including killing off perhaps 95 percent or so of the world’s population supportable without modern technology and with women suppressed without health care (dying in child birth), might well actually address “climate change” in an incredibly dystopian and immoral fashion. (Oops, moral in your distorted lens on the world.) …

That bin Laden is able to, via his distorted lens, gain a glimpse of reality and understand that climate change is a serious issue meriting attention doesn’t suddenly make climate change unreal even though there will be those who seize on this to say things like “bin Laden is against it, therefore I’m for it …”

The path “to stop” climate change is not to “bring the wheels of the American economy” to a halt, but to turn those wheels toward the creation of a clean-energy future … to help Saudi Arabia turn itself into the “Saudi Arabia of Solar Power” … to aid Afghanis prosper with micro-hydro and wind power and efficient lighting … to tap geothermal power in nation’s around the world …

Marc Lynch comments:

The speech itself represents a vintage bin Laden appeal to the mainstream Muslim world, with a heavy focus on Israel and the suffering of the Palestinians and very little reference to salafi-jihadist ideology.  This is important, because one of the reasons for al-Qaeda’s recent decline has been its general exposure — or branding, if you prefer — as an extreme salafi-jihadist movement rather than as an avatar of Muslim resistance.  It has lost ground from the brutality and ideological extremism of its chosen representatives in Iraq, because of nationalist outrage over its ‘near enemy’ attacks in a variety of Arab and Muslim countries, and because of the battles it has  chosen with far more popular Islamist movements such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.  But this does not mean that it can not learn from its mistakes.

I’d put it a bit differently. Iraq showed that bin Laden’s efforts at experimentation — say, outsourcing your campaign to a particularly virulent band of murderous fanatics who will alienate every Iraqi they work with in due course — failed. His message here is crafted to appeal to the lowest common denominator of Islamic extremism. Previous bin Laden tapes have made contentions about strategy, as when he, for instance, justified his Iraqi franchise’s murder of civilians. Now he’s giving the world the Islamic extremist equivalent of motherhood and apple pie, which is to say anti-Semitism. If ever there’s a sign that he’s having trouble capturing the imaginations of even his fellow extremists, there it is.

Here’s the funny bit. bin Laden says that Obama is “powerless” to win the Afghanistan war. Well, perhaps. But this is his 9/11 anniversary message, the one everyone expects at this time every year, and it drops days after the actual anniversary. And al-Qaeda is reportedly having difficulty convincing anyone of its relevance outside Waziristan, after snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq and showing itself unable to recruit new fanatics. Its last several major attack attempts have been foiled and it doesn’t look like it has another mastermind like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed still in its ranks.

In short, bin Laden is like the music industry. His major successes are now on the mixtape circuit, but he can’t figure out, in this new environment, how to translate that into wider success. No one’s interested in buying it anymore.

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The message is “an invitation” from bin Laden to take part in “jihad to stop the aggression against Gaza.”

The terrorist leader has attempted to hijack the cause of the Palestinians before, so this was probably inevitable. What’s always been interesting is how few Palestinians there are in Al Qaeda, a point that Peter Bergen, among others, has made. Palestinians, one presumes, have problems far more close to home that preclude a fascination with global jihad. Yet In an interesting post at Wonk Room last week, Matt Duss surveyed the rise of ultra-extreme Islamist elements in Gaza — yes, more extreme than Hamas — that are competing with Hamas for power. It doesn’t appear that those are Al Qaeda elements, but just as Israel and the United States blithely squeezed Fatah and wound up with Hamas, it’s worth wondering if there’s an alternative in Gaza worse than Hamas as well.