The audiotape attributed to the Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden that the satellite TV channel Al-Jazeera played on last Thursday may be valuable as evidence that he is still alive and still exhibiting his megalomania. The tape certainly should be taken seriously as a new Al Qaeda threat to kill Americans at home. But Laden’s grandiloquent posturing as the leader of a borderless nation has to be seen as the delusional propaganda that it actually is.

As in his audiotape offering Europeans “a reconciliation initiative” in April 2004, Laden’s newest statement addresses a Western public directly. A month after the Madrid train bombing, he was calling on European societies to prevail on their governments to withdraw from Muslim lands in return for a truce that would be renewable. And he warned Europeans that they would be responsible for the consequences if they failed to accept his offer. Similarly, portions of the tape were addressed directly to the American public. If the speaker on the tape is indeed Laden, he is engaging in psychological warfare.

This is a bald attempt to frighten Americans. It comes after US officials, for different reasons, have spent three years frightening Americans. Laden is a petty cult leader who has to be thwarted but who must not be allowed to inspire inordinate fear.