NYDailyNews

Al Jazeera Unmasked An Arab propaganda machine in the guise of real journalism

We still don't know whether the anthrax attacks on NBC and the Florida tabloids come from Osama Bin Laden. But no one should be surprised if the media turn out to be one of his targets. Like the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the free press is a symbol of what America's enemies hate about this country.

President Bush says he is amazed at this hatred. How could so many people despise an open, generous, free nation?

The answer is simple: It is precisely these values that enrage the Islamic world. Muslim fanatics regard liberty as blasphemy.

By now it is apparent that America is engaged not in some anti-terrorist campaign, but in a war of survival. And, as in all modern American warfare, the media have a strategic role to play.

Islamic public opinion is already on the side of the holy warriors, and it will grow as they inflict more havoc on America. The most popular figures in the Middle East are Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Mullah Mohammed Omar. President Bush calls them evildoers, but to their fellow Muslims, they are heroes. That won't change no matter how many leaflets or transistor radios we drop on them.

Ten years ago, before the Persian Gulf War, then-President George Bush went on Iraqi television to reason with the Iraqi people.

Now his son is said to be contemplating an appearance on Al Jazeera, the satellite TV network of the Arab world. What will he tell his audience? That Islam means peace? In the Middle East they know better than that.

Al Jazeera is the favorite network of Bin Laden. It provides him with an unedited forum for his calls to jihad. Some American news executives think it might be dangerous to rebroadcast Bin Laden's screeds because they could contain encrypted messages to his followers. They can relax — Bin Laden has better ways to get out his message.

Which is not to say that Al Jazeera is harmless. It is one of the most potent weapons in the Islamic Axis arsenal.

Radical Islamic nations, including Afghanistan, are basically off-limits to the Western media. This week, the Taliban demonstrated that by catching a French journalist and marching him through the streets, where he was stoned. The reporter may wind up on trial for espionage — a crime, like many in the Islamic canon, punishable by death.

Under these conditions, the information — and, more importantly, the only pictures — from Afghanistan come from Al Jazeera. It is the sole television network allowed by the Taliban, and its satellite feeds the world.

Even a legitimate news organization shouldn't have monopoly coverage of a war. But Al Jazeera is far from legitimate. It is an Arab propaganda outfit controlled by the medieval government of Qatar that masquerades as a real media company. For years, it has inflamed the Arab world against the United States and its allies. Its occasional interviews with Western statesmen, such as Secretary of State Powell, are designed to provide it with a fig leaf of objectivity.

Since the start of the American bombing, Al Jazeera has transmitted grainy pictures of the Afghan sky. But that will change. Soon the actual fighting will intensify, and we will be shown scenes of death and destruction and hear the cries of children. Men on the street will deplore the terrorism the Great Satan is visiting on innocent civilians.

The suffering will be real. America cannot conceivably win the kind of war being waged against it without removing the threat of mass destruction. That means defeating and disarming the Islamic Axis. A struggle of this size inevitably will bring about major casualties, on both sides.

So far, Americans have proven stoic about their losses. The dead of New York and Washington and Pennsylvania have been memorialized with dignity and restraint.

The leaders of the Islamic Axis are counting on precisely this decency. They believe that Americans would rather die than kill, especially if they are forced to watch the killing on television. Al Jazeera's role is to present that killing as an unjustified slaughter, to bring the war into American living rooms as a horror show of satanic cruelty, starring President Bush as Dracula.

A couple weeks ago, the State Department politely asked the government of Qatar to tone down Al Jazeera. Qatar's hereditary monarch uttered some pieties about the imperatives of democracy and turned up his nose. Fair enough. The United States can't expect favors from moderate Arab states whose leaders are terrified by their immoderate citizens.

Dealing with Al Jazeera is a job for the military. Shutting it down should be an immediate priority because, left alone, it has the power to poison the air more efficiently and lethally than anthrax ever could.

Original Publication Date: 10/14/01

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2001