Abu Musab Al Zarqawi: The Making and Unmaking of an American Monster (in Baghdad) Peter Chambers 1 Abstract On June 7, 2006, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the United States’ ‘public enemy number two’, was killed by two 500lb bombs, dropped by US forces on the safe house in which he and others were hiding. This paper is about the making and unmaking of Al Zarqawi as a monster, and his curious afterlife as a governmental technology. As we pass the fifth anniversary of his death, this detailed study of Al Zarqawi offers an invaluable general lesson for the political analysis of terror. Zarqawi’s monstration – his making and unmaking as a monster – tells us about the powers of naming and linking that characterize executive power in the age of globalized media systems, and the productive relation between diurnal practices of security work and the nocturnal phantasms of cultural memory carried by media which, this paper argues, drive and sustain wars in the twenty-first century. Keywords Abu Musab al Zarqawi, global war on terror, coalition of the willing, monstration, terrorism ‘The sleep of reason produces monsters.’ –Goya ‘And never forget: everything has its moment to be believed, however unlikely or anodyne, however incredible or stupid.’ –Javier Marias, Fever and Spear ‘Stories have no point if they don’t absorb our terror.’ –Don DeLillo, Mao II Introduction: Of Monsters and Memory Banks Tony Blair was unfazed by the heckles from the public gallery. Making his final statement to the Chilcot Inquiry, Britain’s ex Prime Minister offered an assessment of his actions, culminating in the following comment: 1 School of Culture and Communication/Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne, Australia Corresponding Author: Peter Chambers, School of Culture and Communication/Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne, Australia Email: pcch@unimelb.edu.au Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 37(1) 30-51 ª The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0304375412440871 http://alt.sagepub.com