Bin Laden's voice aside, war on Iraq is not war on Al Qaeda

Just when the Bush administration was finalizing preparations for a war against Iraq, Osama bin Laden speaks up again. In an audiotape aired Tuesday, a voice judged to be Mr. bin Laden's called on Muslims everywhere to rise up against the US if Washington attacks Iraq.

This move raises the stakes in the US-Baghdad contest considerably. Washington will need smart minds much more than smart weapons if it is to avoid global chaos in the weeks ahead.

In particular, Washington needs to avoid stepping into bin Laden's trap by assuming that he speaks for politically active Muslims everywhere. He doesn't. Different groups of Muslims in various parts of the world are concerned by widely differing issues. But nearly all those issues can be resolved through serious engagement in negotiations. Let's continue to pursue that path wherever possible, rather than letting bin Laden take us all down the path of violence.

Right now, the vast majority of the world's Muslims strongly oppose the US launching what they see as a quite avoidable war against Iraq. (Most non-Muslims worldwide seem to share this view, too.) With his latest message, bin Laden seeks to insinuate himself into the leadership of the sprawling collection of societies known loosely as the "world Muslim community."

If the US blindly goes ahead with the threatened attack on Iraq, will that bring bin Laden closer to his goal, or further from it?

My judgment, based on more than 25 years of studying Muslim issues, is that it will bring bin Laden much, much closer.

The tragic irony in this is that, just days before the airing of the bin Laden tape, Secretary of State Colin Powell, in his presentation at the UN, significantly inflated the strength of the link between Saddam Hussein's regime and bin Laden's Al Qaeda. Now, as in the Yiddish folktale "The Golem," bad dreams seem to be taking on real substance.

In his Feb. 5 speech, Mr. Powell laid out the best evidence he had for the existence of what he called, "the potentially ... sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network."

But the case he made at that time for the existence of this nexus was thin and deeply unconvincing. To note this is not to stick up for Saddam Hussein. He's a very abusive ruler with a long record of deception on significant weapons-related issues. But prudence still dictates that the Bush administration needs to get its facts straight about the Baghdad-Al Qaeda nexus.

The key piece of evidence on this in Powell's speech was a slide showing a grainy satellite image of a dozen small buildings grouped around a courtyard. "Terrorist poison and explosives factory, Khurmal," the caption read.

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