They are the "enemy" he has referred to throughout.
I don't think so. He continuously refers to 1400 years, in other words he is referring to the actual birth of Islam itself and not the relatively modern revivalists, Salafis.
Extremists of all persuasions require a bogeyman as a scapegoat for all the problems they refuse to face. In this case the serendipity of 911 provided the neocons with just the right mix of justifications to implement their policies with ease i.e. scare 'em to death and you can do anything. Prior to 911 there was not much literature about AQ in the corpus of neocon writers. They primarily focused on Saddam as the bogeyman. But following 911 we find an increasing volume of alarmist literature devoted to Islamo-fascism. So now we have the constant paranoiac propaganda that they, the Islamo-fascists will get us.
The creation of this appears to be luck, however the longevity of AQ's life (this is about 1000 members of OBL's cadre .... how many soldiers/police does it take to round up that many criminals?) is as you suggest
exactly what the current administration intended ... as long as we are looking at "them" we won't notice the depredations of the administration
That a case can be made for the last statement is fairly easy when one cites "national security" and "terrorists" as the administrations response for everything. Why would the greatest nation in the world be afraid of 1000 jihadists holed up in Pakistan?
