Investigators discovered wreckage Friday believed to be remains of Egypt Air Flight 804, the Cairo-bound jetliner that crashed into the eastern Mediterranean Thursday after a series of abrupt swerving maneuvers.

It certainly is possible that the destruction of this aircraft was the result of some form of sabotage. But no solid evidence has yet been found, among the wreckage or elsewhere, to justify claims advanced by Western leaders Thursday that Flight 804 was targeted for a terror bombing. In contrast to the provocative statements of various political figures, officials charged with investigating the disaster have been careful to avoid jumping to conclusions.

US officials initially claimed that satellite photos show “strong indications” that the plane was brought down by an explosion, yet failed to bring forward any hard evidence.

A US avionics expert cited in US media late Friday suggested that a mechanical breakdown in the cockpit might have produced an electrical fire.

Even as uncertainty remains over the crash, the US and European ruling elites are seizing on the incident to demand a further escalation of their military operations in the Mediterranean and across Africa and the Middle East, and to intensify their drive to remove all remnants of democratic restraint on the powers of the state.

The NATO powers, which are engaged in massive buildup on Russia’s border, responded to the crash by deploying a multinational naval flotilla to the crash area.

Los Angeles International Airport implemented heightened security procedures Friday, including random searches in entrance areas.

US media responded to 804’s disappearance with warnings that a “New Stage in the War on Terror” has begun, and that “Islamic State and Al Qaeda are on the March.”

The possibility that a bomb was smuggled onboard a flight leaving from Paris’ Charles De Gaulle (CDG) airport would prove the failure of “all the preventative security measures taken to safeguard global civil aviation since 9/11,” Time magazine warned in its report, “If a Bomb Brought Down Egypt Air 804 the War on Terror is About to Change.”

“If airline employees are being doubted, wouldn’t that include a mechanic, who could know where to tuck something out of sight?” Time warned, informing readers that “ISIS operates more like a mass movement” and that “anyone can join who is angry.”

Far from idle speculation, these conceptions are being advanced to rally support in ruling circles for even greater attacks on democratic rights, including intensified surveillance against the working class and the broad mass of the population, under the slogan “anyone may be a terrorist.”

The decade and a half since September 11, 2001 has witnessed, in all of the advanced capitalist countries, a systematic buildup of the state’s capacity to spy on and detain individuals without any legal process. Open dictatorship now looms in all of the leading capitalist “democracies.”

Justified to the public in the name of fighting Islamic terrorism networks, these preparations are intended for use against the international working class. The November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris, planned under the noses of European intelligence, became the basis for the imposition of martial law decrees throughout France that remain in force today and are being bolstered with sweeping anti-labor measures.

The same terror groups who supposedly constitute “the enemy” were armed and financed by the US and the European powers in pursuit of their predatory and neocolonial interests. Beginning in 2011, these forces were mobilized by NATO as tools in its wars against Libya and Syria.

In discussions with members of the Washington-backed dictatorship of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in the Egyptian capital on Friday, US and British diplomatic chiefs offered “all kinds of support” to Egypt’s military government.

The crimes of Egypt’s military regime, which has carried out massacres and mass executions in an effort to crush the revolutionary movement of the Egyptian working class that erupted in 2011, exemplify the real meaning of the “war on terrorism,” which aims at the suppression by military and police violence of the workers and oppressed masses throughout the entire world.