In fact they are examples of macho posturing a demonstration of the hideous values of patriarchy in which desiccated older men Zawahiri send

In fact, they are examples of macho posturing, a demonstration of the hideous values of patriarchy in which desiccated older men (Zawahiri) send deluded young fools (Khan) to act out their militaristic fantasies. I’m not sure what the contemporary equivalent would be but I’m certainly up for cavorting on top of the Tora Bora caves in heels and my best Dolce & Gabbana frock. I have a vivid memory of watching from the woods on a chilly New Year’s morning as the sun rose to reveal a dozen women dancing cheekily on top of a missile silo. This isn’t as frivolous as it seems: I can see why people are horrified by al-Qa’ida but it seems to me quite possible (and indeed healthy) to find its leaders ridiculous at the same time, just as an earlier generation both feared and mocked the Nazis.

According to the Daily Mail, which devoted three pages to them on Friday, the latest al-Qa’ida videos (featuring one of the 7 July bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan, and the chief al-Qa’ida ideologue, Ayman al-Zawahiri) are a “chilling” declaration of war.

Rituals, she says, that “serve to stabilise moments of crisis”. Politicians have an expected, unwritten part to play in those rituals, as the priests of modern ceremonies of death Clinton and Blair understand that role Last week proved that Bush does not
More from John Rentoul. It is more than 20 years since I used to go regularly to the American missile base at Greenham Common, a location where the politics of gender could hardly have been played out more starkly. People wanted to know that he felt their pain and anguish at the growing disaster unfolding on their television screens.

As heavily armed United States servicemen patrolled inside the razor wire, occasionally shouting insults at the women camped outside, it wasn’t difficult to see why one of the most popular slogans among the protesters was “take the toys from the boys”. As Jean Seaton observes in her new book, Carnage and the Media, journalists observe surprisingly strict rituals in reporting violence and disaster. As Clarke said, “I would have accepted that increased risk as the price of going to war if I had believed that we were driven to go to war for a just cause”. For Blair – and for most MPs and, at the time, the majority of the British people – Iraq was a just cause. But to go down that line of argument would get Blair nowhere, with journalists itching to write “PM admits Iraq war increased terror risk”. So it was better to leave it to the families of those killed on 7 July to respond to Khan’s video.That is the distinctive feature of empathetic politicians such as Blair and Clinton. They recognise that politics is about mood rather than argument.

It was no use President Bush, in his first statement on the hurricane, listing all the things the federal government was doing. As Kenneth Clarke ought to know perfectly well, the Prime Minister has never said that “the danger of attack on Britain has nothing to do with the war”, as Clarke alleged. The shock of those murderous sentiments expressed in the vernacular reawakened fears of undetectable killers in our midst. Yet it was left to a mere apprentice of the empathetic arts, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, to offer the Government’s only comment. But it would be just as inflammatory for Blair to say emphatically what he really thinks, which is that the greater risk of a particular kind of terrorism has to be borne.

That consisted of a peevish refusal to accept that Britain’s part in the invasion of Iraq had made the 7 July bombings more likely.You can see why Blair stuck to his script about anti-social behaviour in Friday’s speech, however. Likewise, there was more form than substance to his statement at Gleneagles after the London bombings on 7 July: “It is important that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people.” But his words helped shape the mood of defiance that was part of coming to terms with what had happened.It was all the more striking, therefore, that Blair had nothing to say last week about the video recorded by Mohammed Sidique Khan, the London bomber. He and Clinton appear to sense shifts in public opinion before they happen. Both have been accused of short-termism in pursuit of headlines, but the corollary of that is that they are attuned to the way big stories play out in the media and hence to the impact they have on perceptions of themselves.