Joe Conason offers up an intriguing concept — that the way to neutralize a group like Al Qaeda is to divide its base, convincing citizens who might follow them that America is not The Great Satan, as it is portrayed, and that it is not out to destroy Muslims or their states. Okay, that makes sense. The point Conason makes is that Obama is uniquely qualified to achieve that in a way that someone else — say, John McCain — was not.
By the by: Back when a lot of us had the audacity to suggest that George W. Bush might not be a wonderful president, a stock way of dismissing us without rebutting us was to accuse us of being "Bush-haters." The new response from all the same people is that we're "Obama-worshippers." I don't think either was ever valid and I note how uncomfy a lot of us are with Obama's seeming policies of growing government secrecy and executive power. Sure hope we're wrong about the direction he's heading with all that because I don't trust anyone, Democrat or Republican, with the kind of omnipotence that Bush demanded and that Obama seems to be extending.