The Washington Post has a fascinating piece about how Al Qaeda has unleashed a blistering verbal attack on Barack Obama—all because he is less hateable to them than George Bush.

Obama has been called a “hypocrite,” a “killer” of innocents, an “enemy of Muslims.” He was even blamed for the Israeli military assault on Gaza, which began and ended before he took office.

“He kills your brothers and sisters in Gaza mercilessly and without affection,” an al-Qaeda spokesman declared in a grainy Internet video this month.

The torrent of hateful words is part of what terrorism experts now believe is a deliberate, even desperate, propaganda campaign against a president who appears to have gotten under al-Qaeda’s skin. The departure of George W. Bush deprived al-Qaeda of a polarizing American leader who reliably drove recruits and donations to the terrorist group.

Which shows a couple of things, I suppose: That combating terrorism means blending strength with wisdom, and that Al Qaeda, like any bureaucracy, won’t just fold up shop and go away, even if it gets what it wants….