ONE OF SEN. John McCain’s favorite themes was that Sen. Barack Obama was soft on terrorists, which implied that Osama bin Laden would be tickled if Obama were elected. But the world’s terrorist-in-chief has been conspicuously mum on America’s choice. The most al-Qaida has been able to muster is a puerile audiotaped statement by Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s voluble deputy — disseminated over two weeks after the election — that Obama is a “house Negro” destined to fail in Iraq and Afghanistan. This weak response almost certainly reflects their profound disappointment in Obama’s victory.

President George W. Bush, whose foreign policy McCain has staunchly supported, has been a crack recruiting sergeant for al-Qaida and its affiliates. The U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq that Bush engineered has intensified many Muslims’ worries about America’s global intentions and made them more susceptible to bin Laden’s arguments. Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri have been able to cast the Iraq war as confirmation of Washington’s wish to dominate the Arab and larger Muslim world politically, economically and militarily; its intention to loot Islam of its natural resources, in particular oil; and its support for Israel’s repression of Palestinian Muslims.

The Iraq war has stoked jihadist recruitment and fundraising and energized the jihadist movement — especially in Europe, the platform for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The war has also drained vital military resources from Afghanistan, and executive attention from the security of the U.S. homeland. And the revealed deficiencies in U.S. intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction have shattered the confidence of American allies in the United States’ motivations and competence.

Bin Laden must have taken great comfort from the fact that the terrorist network has remained dispersed and hard to target yet still turbocharged by the American occupation of Iraq. Even so, McCain was still intent on “victory” in Iraq, and on the open-ended commitment of a large contingent of American forces that any such hope entailed. Thus, while Obama intends to draw down the U.S. presence in Iraq to weaken its inspirational grip on radical Islam and devote the primary strategic effort to stabilizing Afghanistan and killing or capturing bin Laden himself, McCain would have ensured that grip remained firm and left bin Laden freer to rebuild his stronghold in Pakistan and expand al-Qaeda operations worldwide.

From bin Laden’s perspective, a McCain presidency would have sustained the happy confluence of circumstances that eight years of Bush had produced: a strategically bogged-down America hated by much of Islam and regarded warily even by its allies. Beyond that, bin Laden would have apprehended the United States’ financial crisis, and McCain’s unconvincing economic policies, as boons to al-Qaida’s economic-warfare effort.

Many Americans and others perceived Sen. John Kerry as merely the better of two mediocrities. Obama represents an affirmative and historic hope for a reinvented America that is once again confident, exemplary and admired. Bin Laden now beholds not an Obama presidency that will reprise the weakened, beleaguered America of Jimmy Carter’s tenure or perpetuate the embattled America weakened by its own recklessness that a McCain presidency would have augured, but one that revives adroit alliance management and earnest multilateralism, leavens Muslim perceptions of the United States, restores international respect for the United States, and reinvigorates solidarity in the global counterterrorism campaign. Obama’s victory has been overwhelmingly applauded in Europe and the Middle East, and should shrink al-Qaida’s funding and recruiting base and accelerate the downward trend in its popularity among Muslims.

Just four days before the 2004 presidential election, a videotape in which bin Laden likened Bush to the apostate Arab rulers al-Qaida viciously opposed was released and aired over the Al Jazeera network. It had the intended effect of tilting voters defensively towards Bush, and may have helped determine the outcome of a close election. Bin Laden knew that Bush’s antagonistic unilateralism inspired jihadists around the world, and wanted to do whatever he could to keep the party going. This time around, bin Laden didn’t bother weighing in. Seeing an American public more enthralled with Obama’s preternatural coolness and vision than anyone else’s fear-mongering, bin Laden evidently knew he was overmatched.

Jonathan Stevenson is a professor of strategic studies at the U.S. Naval War College. His book, Thinking Beyond the Unthinkable, was published by Viking in August.