So now Osama's cracking jokes

Matt Yglesias gets to the beef of the Osama bin Laden tape.

The most interesting thing about the Osama tape is the reference to My Pet Goat. That business was, even when Michael Moore did it, closer to being a joke than a serious argument. So now Osama's cracking jokes at our expense. He's not afraid, he's not injured, he's not on the run, he doesn't worry that the courier that delivers his videotapes might betray him, or that the local government wherever he is is going to find him. He's sitting -- wounds healed, shura council reconstituted, ideological network growing -- and he's laughing at us.

Capturing OBL is not the be-all and end-all of the war on terrorism, but if you want to know what kind of weakness invites the wolves in for supper, then you saw it right there on video. A man plots and organizes the slaughter of thousands of Americans and three years later there he is, distributing his latest threats and boasts over a global satellite network. Laughing at us. At all of us. And all because the president couldn't be bothered to nab him.

Yes Osama is cracking jokes and he is laughing at us. Do you feel safer from the wolves now?