Had the plot succeeded (it still might, who knows?), one can imagine the outrage it would have generated around the world. But even in its failure, it has succeeded in sending a wave of fear and apprehension among a large section of air travellers, especially those in Europe and the US. Suddenly, much of the safety, comfort and freedom that westerners enjoyed, and which they took for granted, seemed threatened. Britain, in particular, is hit by the most excruciating existential crisis in its history. Which country wouldn’t if a significant section of its own population expresses sympathy for warlike terrorist acts carried out on its own soil?

In a recent opinion poll, almost a quarter of British Muslims said the July 2005 bombings in London (which killed 56 people) can be justified because of the Government’s support for America’s ‘‘anti-Muslim war on terror’’. Even in Thursday’s aborted terrorist attack, a majority of the 21 people arrested reportedly are British Muslims of Pakistani origin. US President George Bush was right when, reacting to the foiled terrorist plot, he described the menace that his own country and Britain faced—and which many other countries, including India, also face—as ‘‘Islamic fascism’’.

But the fact that he is the wrong person to talk of a war on Islamist terrorism became evident in the second significant event of last week. Senator Joseph Lieberman, who was Al Gore’s deputy in the Democratic bid for the 2000 US presidential election, was defeated in the primary by a little-known candidate. In itself, it is nothing more than provincial news in a foreign country, hardly deserving of people’s attention in the rest of the world. However, it contained an important message that neither the US nor the rest of the world can ignore. Lieberman was trounced because the voters were angry at his support for the Bush administration’s costly, senseless and seemingly endless war in Iraq. The mood in Connecticut is not atypical of the current mood of frustration and anxiety, shared by a majority of the Americans, over the Iraq war. Even The New York Times editorially slammed Bush in unusually harsh words: ‘‘A war that began at the President’s choosing has degenerated into a desperate, bloody mess that has turned much of the world against the United States.’’

Recall all the lies that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld told in the run-up to America’s barbaric war on Iraq in 2003. Till date they have not been able to provide proof for even a single argument in justification of the attack on, occupation of, and coercive regime change in a sovereign country located thousands of miles away. Weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Baghdad’s basements? None found even after the most intrusive of international inspections. Saddam Hussein’s hand in 9/11? Not even the United States’s own official report on 9/11 has bought this fib. And yet, Bush ordered, and Blair acquiesced in, the invasion of Iraq in what was technologically the most awesome display of military power devoid of any moral anchor or legal fig-leaf.

So, even as we heave a sigh of relief over the thousands of mainly British and American lives saved in the thwarted aircraft explosions last week, we are duty-bound to ask ourselves the inescapable question: Who is responsible for the death of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians in all those ‘‘shock and awe’’ bombings, a macabre reality-TV spectacle which the world community watched helplessly? Who is responsible for the horrendous bloodletting that is still taking place in Iraq on almost a daily basis?

Saddam was by no means an angel. He was a ruthless dictator. But by overthrowing his regime in such wantonly illegitimate manner, the Bush administration has actually aided and abetted the cause of jehadi terrorism. This cause no doubt predates Bush, and will continue to menace countries that cherish pluralism and democracy long after Bush has gone. But none can deny that, post-Iraq, jehadi terrorism has won thousands of new sympathisers in the Muslim world. Those who plotted the aerial version of last year’s bomb blasts in London might well have thought of it as their own low-tech response to the hi-tech war that Bush ordered in Iraq.

The Bush administration has spent upwards of $140 billion on the Iraq war, and the cost is increasing by $177 million a day. But an even greater cost is the steady arrival of ‘bodybags’ in a war that American soldiers don’t know why they are fighting. They only know that they will never win it. This explains why Connecticut—and much of the rest of the US—is angry with Bush and those like Lieberman who support his indefensible war.

The message of last week’s events is thus unmistakable. The threat that jehadi terrorism—which is but another name for fascism feeding on a perverse misinterpretation of Islam—poses to India and to the rest of mankind is real. It must not be belittled. It is mainly the responsibility of pious Muslims, who believe in Islam’s core teachings of peace and universal brotherhood, to confront the extremist mindset that supports terrorism. At the same time, both non-Muslims and Muslims must jointly confront, in non-violent and democratic ways, the war-mongers in Washington who, in the guise of the war on terror, are desperately trying to preserve America’s weakening hegemony over the world.