 Such events are not part of the calendar of evil, which records only the suffering and death caused by "terrorism".
To the Republican/neo-conservative militarists in the US foreign policy establishment, the shock of 9/11 provided an opportunity to "go massive", as Donald Rumsfeld once put it, against an array of different enemies.
Now the shock is wearing off and these options are closing. The Bush presidency
is in freefall. Opinion polls demonstrate widespread opposition to the Iraq war. The US government's own National Intelligence Estimate says that al-Qaeda has regrouped and is stronger than ever.
No wonder Republicans like Santorum appear to look forward to the
possibility of "another 9/11". For these pundits, criticism of the administration's foreign policy is a sign of dangerous complacency that can be reversed only by a lethal shock.
And now, like a malignant jack-in-the-box villain, up pops the grotesque figure
of Ayman al-Zawahiri to make two threats in the same
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Chertoff justified his feeling about an imminent
al-Qaeda attack on the grounds ‘summertime seems to be appealing to them’ |
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week, including a "very precise response" to Salman Rushdie's knighthood.
There is no need to seek conspiratorial explanations for this intervention.
Al-Qaeda and the US ideologues of the "war on terror" have often used each other to fulfil their own particular objectives.
For some time now, the Bush administration has been one of al-Qaeda's major assets and vice versa. "Another 9/11" would cement this grim symbiosis. If it happens, al-Zawahiri & Co will demonstrate their "power". The advocates of the "war on terror" will see themselves as vindicated.
A new date will enter the atrocity calendar. Critics of the Iraq war will fall silent, cowed by the enormity of the event. There will be presidential photo-ops and solemn speeches on our common values from the White House lawn. There will be more emergency legislation, more calls to erect immigration barriers.
Above all, there will be more wars, and the world will sink a little deeper into the vortex of violence, barbarism and hatred, from which it may one day prove impossible to emerge.
FIRST POSTED JULY 19, 2007
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