This article focuses on how the actions of enemies are co-ordinated in and through the mass media. Using ethnomethodologically informed membership categorisation analysis, the authors establish links between the presentation of the September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington in the public addresses of George W. Bush, Osama bin Laden and Václav Havel. They find that all three distinguished between 'us' and 'them' in order to recruit allies and justify the continuation of violence. The us/them membership category pairs observed were 'defenders of civilisation' vs. 'terrorists' (Bush, Havel) and 'defenders of Islam' vs. 'infidel crusaders' (bin Laden). These category pairs were not separate but rather joined through shared incumbency and in contrastively coordinated formulations of the conflict. The authors show how the actions of enemies are synchronised in media dialogical networks, which provide a limited but the only means of communication.