CAIRO -- Osama bin Laden said in a new audiotape that President Barak Obama's strategy in Afghanistan is ``hopeless'' and called on Americans to resolve the conflict with al Qaeda by ending the war there and breaking the U.S. alliance with Israel.

In the message marking the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the al Qaeda leader avoided his usual rhetoric of jihad and instead took a more analytical tone, claiming to explain to the U.S. public the root causes of the conflict -- which he said were the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But analysts said Monday that the message's tone and its unusually short length -- at only 11 minutes, far shorter than other videos al Qaeda has released to mark the anniversary -- indicated how al Qaeda was struggling to maintain attention eight years after its most shattering terror attacks.

``You might interpret this as a sign of weakness, the suggestion being that they don't really want to fight the U.S.,'' Jeremy Binnie, an analyst with Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center, said of bin Laden's tone.

In 2007, al Qaeda marked the 9/11 anniversary with releasing multiple videos by several of its leaders.

In 2008, it issued a 90-minute summing-up of seven years of struggle.

Evan Kohlman, a terrorism expert at globalterroralert.com, said al Qaeda appears to have been unable to come up with a way to confront the greater popularity of the new U.S. president.

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