Zarqawi: taking care of business: a kind of dialogue is unfolding in Iraq, writes Daniel Ross, one that draws the opponents of the West in to the system they despise.(Abu Musab al-Zarqawi)

Whoever wants to hang his dog pretends to be angry.

Proverb, cited by Bernard Stiegler

If, as Aristotle said, a life can only truly be evaluated from the standpoint of its end, then the recent blowing-up suffered by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi provides such an opportunity. But what could there be to say? Perhaps his was a religious life to the degree that he believed in the necessity of maintaining fidelity to something beyond the basest of desires (unlike the West, which shamelessly submits its existence to the enduring freedom to consume). If so, however, this could only be a religion no longer devoted to taking care of the living and, on the contrary, over determined by its preoccupation with death. And, in his own case, this was a death that American military forces willingly and inevitably took care of on his behalf. But the real significance of the life of the purported leader of al-Qaeda-in-Mesopotamia does not lie in whatever religious justifications he may have claimed. If we want to understand his actions, then knowing his motives tells us nothing until we also grasp the essential conditions enabling the elaboration of a strategy. In the case of al-Qaeda-in-Mesopotamia, just as for the United States in the prosecution of its goals, among the most important of those conditions turns out to be the spectral and performative character of the worldwide system of audiovisual broadcast.

Not very many days before his demise, a videotape surfaced in which Zarqawi featured, and on which he stated his location as somewhere within the vicinity of Abu Ghraib prison. This statement was not especially geographical--he meant rather to tell us that the scenes of torture conducted there remained close to his heart. He was claiming, in short, that among his inspirations was constant recollection of American violence, of which Abu…