The War on Terror
The ‘war on terror’ is a deliberately ambiguous phrase that means little yet bequeaths very much indeed. Terror and organised terrorism is a form of extra territorial crime that all states must deal with. The concept of terrorism is as old as the paradigm of civilisation itself.
The ancient Greeks had to deal with it, as has every subsequent civilisation since, yet the Bush administration is the first to call this a war. The benefits to the ruling classes of calling the fight against bin Laden and his associates a ‘war’ is that it deflects attention in the media onto a warlike propaganda lens where every action is perceived as either patriotic or unpatriotic. The media, in a time of war, has a duty to support the national government and its troops. The BBC, of course, discovered this fact to considerable cost in the summer of 2003 with the Andrew Gilligan Dr. David Kelly affair where, ultimately, the view of the central government prevailed.
Yet unlike the UK, America has no such comparable independent broadcaster as the BBC or Channel 4 Television. Although commercially owned and operating within the private sector, US cable and satellite news services were not spawned from the same long struggle for freedom of speech that characterised western European media expanses in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Policy of the central government on Capitol Hill is thus more intrinsically tied to the expression given to it by the national media. Furthermore, the sheer size of the United States with its inherent time zones and geographical variations meant that a more centralised form of domestic media was necessary, another key feature in the differences between the media expressions of Europe and America.
Invoking a war on terror permits the US government to pass laws that otherwise would have been deemed unconstitutional. The most extreme forms of the new post September 11 version of legal doctrine in America pertains to Muslims, with particular reference to the detainment of terror suspects, in many cases involving covert extradition to Middle Eastern countries whose human rights abuses permit torture that would otherwise be illegal in the US. Inevitably, the remainder of western countries have followed suit, another of the multitude of changes that has beset the free world since 9/11.
The media have therefore shown, since September 11, an almost constant stream, on both sides of the Atlantic, of ‘normal’ Arabs and Muslims being taken away on suspicion of plotting another terrorist coup. The effect of this drip tap media saturation against ordinary everyday Muslims should not be underestimated. Due to the media and right wing political law making, the ‘war on terror’ takes place not just in the deserts of Iraq but also in the streets and towns that constitute suburban America and urban Europe. Encouraged to report anything suspicious to the authorities, the indigenous populations of Europe and America are living in a permanent climate of fear as a direct result of the incessant propaganda seeping from the media giants of the West. This is, on a scale in line with the high level communication advances left as the residue of the new media age, state sponsored discrimination and a less militant, though equally harmful, version of the propaganda campaign initiated by the Nazi State in relation to the perceived threat of the Jews, at least until the organised criminality of Reichskristallnacht (November 1937).
As Muslims are continually portrayed in a negative light, a lie slowly becomes the truth, regardless of the level of academic competence of the population in question. The problem of media saturation is more acute in the US for reasons already stated; the marriage of the media and state foreign policy being the main factor. Furthermore, the effects of the incessant portrayal of Islam as an enemy of the West will not be fully felt until the generation most exposed to modern media propaganda reach an age of political maturity and power. Therefore, though at present the stereotypical views promulgated of everyday Muslims is deeply harmful for western society, the long term effects may prove catastrophic as an entire generation may yet grow up to believe in a crude policy of religious and ideological crusade.
The contemporary modern media uses repetition as its main tool of re enforcing popular elitist beliefs. The word evil has been used with more frequency since September 11 than at any point in history since the Allied discovery (at least the discovery that was made public) of the full extent of the horrors of the Holocaust. The President exacerbated the problem by issuing an ill advised warning against the supposed axis of evil consisting of North Korea, Iran and Syria, three nations that Washington had targeted as potential perpetrators of the next 9/11. Unsurprisingly, satellite news channels in the USA perpetuated this sense of good versus evil, ‘them’ against ‘us’. Yet the print media has been equally guilty of adding to the sense of besiegement felt by the American public by fanning the flames of prejudice. In January 2002 Larry Miller (2003:216) wrote an essay for The Weekly Standard, which serves as an example of the kind of literature which portrays Muslims not only in a negative light but in an almost sub human context.
Listen carefully: We’re good, they’re evil, nothing is relative. Say it with me now and free yourselves. You see, folks, saying, ‘we’re good’ doesn’t mean ‘we’re perfect’. Okay? The only perfect being is the bearded guy on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The plain fact is that our country has, with all our mistakes and blunders, always been and always will be the greatest beacon of freedom, charity, opportunity, and affection in history. If you need proof, open all the borders on Earth and see what happens. In about half a day, the entire world would be a ghost town, and the United States would look like one giant line to see The Producers So here’s what I resolve: to never forget our murdered brothers and sisters. To never let the relativists get away with their immoral thinking. After all, no matter what your daughter’s political science professor says, we didn’t start this.
This excerpt portrays a commonplace attitude towards Muslims and the victims of the terrorist attacks. At no point does Miller, or indeed many of the top New York journalists, attempt to answer the question as to why the events of 9/11 happened. Moreover, the arrogant view that the United States is the single greatest source of freedom in the world without any form of culpability for its actions is a highly dangerous factor in the context of the current state of international affairs. If the media are unwilling to engage in debate as to the reasons for widespread animosity towards the USA then there is little chance that the general public will start to question official foreign policy either. The broad view promulgated by the media, on both sides of the Atlantic but particularly in America, is that the Muslim terrorists are fuelled by simple hatred and jealousy. Clearly, it is this kind of attitude that has helped to win new recruits for Al Qaeda and hamper the effective comprehension of terrorism in the West. Yet, in a more subtle fashion, Miller here also shows us a divisive form of journalism, more damaging even than using words such as evil. By invoking the bearded guy on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel he has opened up a dangerous path which leads inexorably towards fighting the war on terror from a religious angle. In this context, irresponsible media coverage has helped to move the fight against terrorists into a modern form of crusade, where Islam as a faith is perceived to be as much of a threat as bin Laden and his hard line activists.
Tags: Al Qaeda, America, Bin Laden, civilisations, G.W. Bush, media, Muslims
