From The Asia Times
By Pepe Escobar

“Security is a shared destiny. If we are secure, you might be secure, and if we are safe, you might be safe. And if we are struck and killed, you will definitely – with Allah’s permission – be struck and killed.”
– Ayman al-Zawahiri, in the new al-Qaeda video The Correct Equation.

US President George W Bush’s State of the Union address – apart from the amalgam of al-Qaeda and Iran in the same sentence – was a non-event in terms of a new strategy for the Middle East.

Bush said, “We could expect an epic battle between Shi’ite extremists backed by Iran, and Sunni extremists aided by al-Qaeda and supporters of the old regime. A contagion of violence could spill out across the country [Iraq] – and in time the entire region could be drawn into the conflict.”

Bush did admit that “we have been sobered by the enemy’s fierce reaction” in Iraq, adding that the war, with its sectarian fury, “is not the fight we entered in Iraq. But it is the fight we are in. It is still within our power to shape the outcome of this battle. So let us find our resolve, and turn events toward victory.”

With Bush offering nothing new, US and world public opinion might do well to focus on the state of the (dis)union in the heart of Islam. What the “enemy” is thinking has been personified by a video starring al-Qaeda’s No 2, Sunni Arab Ayman al-Zawahiri, and an interview by Iraqi Shi’ite nationalist leader Muqtada al-Sadr.

Zawahiri, looking like a bearded Woody Allen in a slick, al-Sahab-produced, 14-minute-plus video with English subtitles, once again repeated what al-Qaeda has been stressing for years: if Islam is not attacked, the West won’t be attacked. He took great pains to stress that security is a “shared destiny” between Islam and the West. The White House hasn’t exactly been listening.

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