Il y a un passage tr\u00e8s int\u00e9ressant, pris dans sa sp\u00e9cificit\u00e9, dans l’article de Zbigniew Brzezinski auquel nous avons consacr\u00e9 une note<\/a> dans cette m\u00eame rubrique hier. Le voici, et nous le donnons \u00e0 lire, justement, en le d\u00e9tachant du contexte :<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abBut the little secret here may be that the vagueness of the phrase was deliberately (or instinctively) calculated by its sponsors. Constant reference to a war on terror did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue. The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it got without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9\/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Support for President Bush in the 2004 elections was also mobilized in part by the notion that a nation at war does not change its commander in chief in midstream. The sense of a pervasive but otherwise imprecise danger was thus channeled in a politically expedient direction by the mobilizing appeal of being at war.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbTo justify the war on terror, the administration has lately crafted a false historical narrative that could even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. By claiming that its war is similar to earlier U.S. struggles against Nazism and then Stalinism (while ignoring the fact that both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were first-rate military powers, a status al-Qaeda neither has nor can achieve), the administration could be preparing the case for war with Iran. Such war would then plunge America into a protracted conflict spanning Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and perhaps also Pakistan.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n