About eight months after the 9/11 attacks , al-Qaeda released a statement in which the organization seemed to be responding to Muslim criticism of the attacks. Criticism had revolved around the fact that Bin Laden had not warned the United States sufficiently before attacking; this ran runs contrary to Islamic tradition. In the statement signed by al-Qaeda and released in April 2002, the organization laid out seven Islamic justifications for having attacked the US and killed civilians without warning.

Yet, statements released by al-Qaeda leaders after 9/11 show that the organization, in anticipation of another attack on US soil, is fulfilling the obligation to warn an enemy sufficiently before an attack is carried out. The most recent Bin Laden tape is the most obvious example of that, whereby Bin Laden circumvents the US leadership by offering a truce directly to the American people . Given the extent to which al-Qaeda has been observed to monitor American politics, it is not a reach to say that Bin Laden knows that this is a mid-term election year.