The press is
playing patsy
with terrorist propaganda
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF
Associate since 1991
Comments directly to
JonatPower@aol.com
April 6, 2007
LONDON - Doubtless, at the moment of impact, the shards
of the suicide bombers’ device will turn me into an emotional wreck,
not to say a physical mess. But until that moment arrives I trust that
I am in charge of my mental faculties. Pace 9/11, I am not afraid of terrorism,
even though I lived in London during the worst years of IRA activity and
already this year I missed a terrorist attack on my hotel in Islamabad
by only a couple of days.
Terrorism and the damage it can do - in particular
the political and societal damage - is greatly overrated. Who to blame?
Doubtless, the politicians have a vested interest in whipping up the populace’s
reaction, but most of all we should blame the media. They behave like
patsies to the terrorists. They give their dirty deeds every bit of publicity
they could ever dare to hope for and, as I saw last month in Nigeria’s
oil producing delta, ignore the often valuable activities of the plethora
of non-violent activists.
By and large the media get the perspective totally wrong - who but a few
observant folk know that the Tamil terrorists (Hindus for the most part)
have a much worse terrorism record than Al Qaeda, with their attacks on
Sri Lanka’s Buddhists and fellow Hindu’s? If there is a clash
of civilizations anywhere on the planet - which frankly I doubt - it is
on this pear shaped, tropical paradise of an island in the balmy Indian
Ocean far away from any strategic interests of the big powers.
Second, the media, with only a handful of worthy exceptions, do an appalling
job of presenting the facts behind the outrages. In the new issue of Prospect
Magazine, Robert Dreyfus reports that Wayne White - who led the State
Department’s intelligence effort on Iraq until 2005 - describes
most of the “terrorists” in Iraq today as POIs, or “pissed
off Iraqis “ who are fighting because “they don’t like
the occupation”. Yet the press, until relatively recently, constantly
replayed the Bush administration’s plain chant that without the
American/British military presence Al Qaeda might take over Iraq. No wonder
it has taken four years too long for the American and British public to
turn against the war.
Ronald Steel noted in the New Republic after the 1996 attack on the Khobar
Towers in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 Americans, that the U.S. media
were fixated on “who or what bin Laden attacked” but “what
bin Laden had been saying about why he and his Al Qaeda forces were attacking
was given short shrift”. Only since the publication of Michael Schueur’s
“Imperial Hubris” in 2004 has some of the media been shamed
into regularly publishing excerpts of Al Qaeda’s communiqués.
But there is an even more serious problem than that. The way the media
and the politicians always play it is that the terrorists are in danger
of winning and unless our political leaders are licensed to get tough
we are going to succumb. A new study by Max Abrahms in Harvard University’s
quarterly, “International Security”, shows the shallowness
of such thinking. The study analyses the political life of 28 terrorist
groups- the complete list of foreign terrorist organizations designated
by the State Department. The data yield a quite unexpected finding - the
terrorists accomplished their objectives only 7% of the time.
This is not an argument for giving into terrorism.
It is a foul tactic that claims too many innocent lives. It is an argument
simply for de-emphasising it and allowing the space for diplomacy and
negotiations to work, and for the terrorists to get old and tire of the
rough life, as they often do.
Look at the political plight of the Spanish prime minister, José
Luis Rodríquez Zapatero. Since the first day he took office he
has constantly been pilloried by the principal opposition party for being
soft on the Basque terrorist group, ETA. The Popular Party has kept up
the false refrain that the Madrid station bombings of three years ago
that took 190 lives were the work of ETA. For long enough Zapatero tried
to ignore them, and continued his quiet and seemingly progressing negotiations
with ETA. But then late last year what is probably a dissident ETA grouping
killed two people at Madrid airport and most of the media, softened up
by three years of the opposition’s carping, turned on Zapatero.
His negotiating hands are now effectively tied.
In Britain progress was only made with the IRA because the government
simply lied over many years that it was negotiating with the terrorists.
Who today would dare stand up and say talk to Al Qaeda, negotiate with
the Taliban or treat the leaders of Hamas as sincere fellows whose agenda
is worth discussing? There are few of our politicians, and even fewer
members of the media.
Copyright © 2007 Jonathan
Power
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Jonathan Power can be
reached by phone +44 7785 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Jonathan
Power
2007 Book
Conundrums
of Humanity
The Quest for Global Justice
“Conundrums
of Humanity” poses eleven questions for our future progress, ranging
from “Can we diminish War?” to “How far and fast can
we push forward the frontiers of Human Rights?” to “Will
China dominate the century?”
The answers to these questions, the author believes, growing out of
his long experience as a foreign correspondent and columnist for the
International Herald Tribune, are largely positive ones, despite the
hurdles yet to be overcome. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, London, 2007.
Jonathan
Power's book from 2001
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