Terrorists Manipulate Western Media

Glenn Reynolds says something profound every once in a while and today he hit the nail on the head:

As the UPI's Pam Hess noted a while back, the press seems relatively unconcerned about being manipulated by the insurgency, but deeply afraid of anything that might slant its reporting in favor of the U.S. military; this is just another illustration of that phenomenon. But terrorism is, of course, information war disguised as military action, and manipulating the press is what the terrorists are all about. If the press were more resistant to such tactics, the terrorists would be less effective -- and, ironically, the press would be a less appealing target.

UPDATE: Dave Price has related thoughts.

Terrorism is an information war. Terrorists want a certain idealogical outcome which will lead to cultural outcome which will lead to economic outcome (almost assuredly bad for the common folk but good for the ruling Mullah Class), which will lead to a strategic outcome which will form a bigger platform to spew the ideology they want to seed and spread.

Because the terrorists know American and other Western journalists bias (which is, for all of you who haven't figured it out yet, that the U.S. is bad and mean and bullying and a huge, vast gluttonous Imperial power) they can easily manipulate them to their own ends, and have, very effectively, in fact. So when the media portrays Iraq going to hell in a bombed out Hummer (yippee! the insurgents are winning, those peace-loving, country-defending goody-goodies will triumph!) and the bully is going down thanks to the homeboy's grit it, works well for the terrorists. They don't need Bin Laden or Zarchari or any other wacko mouthpiece, they have better, more "well-reasoned", culturally acceptable mouthpiece dressed up in the clothes, make-up and language acceptable to the enemy.

This strategy, a good, smart and efficient one I might add, has hit a snag. More Iraqi people, even a few Sunnis (gasp!), are seeing the way of the future and car bombs are impeeding that future not speeding it. Imagine that! The Iraqi people are getting sick of being used as cannon fodder by other Muslims and former regimers who claim to be serving them. It is getting to be a tougher sell every day.

For a while, Iraqis complained (and some still do) that the U.S. isn't protecting them, that they are sitting ducks. While that criticism has some roots in truth, the greater truth is that to protect their own self-interests they need to get on board with helping those who can protect them. In this case, it means their own Iraqi army and police, those brave people willing to risk life and limb for their own country. These people, the real heros, are the ones defending Iraq and being a force to build a stable country for the future.

Well, guess what? Iraqis are jumping in and helping themselves. Infused with the hope of an election, seeing real progress, sifting through the propaganda and seeing the truth for themselves, they are joining the effort to build their country.

Foreign-born fighters, those "noble" (insurgents) violence spreading cancer cells, need nourishment to survive. Like human tumors, they survive on blood supply--energy in the form of money, food, protection. Slowly, they are being choked and starved of what they need--at least in Iraq. Iran, Syria and other forces are happy to oblige and fill this need.

Now, if the Western media could step out of their hotel fortresses without fear of death at the hands of these noblemen, they would see, even with their jaded eyes, hope in the form of schools, hospitals, commerce and....progress. They might even report it. Might.

That's a chance the noblemen don't want to take. Since their mouthpieces are changing their tune (or might) they revert to their typical mouthpieces. Crazy men, yes, but at least they spout the desired information.

Enter stage left: Osama Bin Laden. Ding-dong American and other Western journos will make their own interpretation of this beast raising his ugly head, but what will the average Muslim think? Won't they have to balance his rhetoric against the images of the suffering their Muslim brothers and sisters experience at his supposedly benevolent hands? There was a reason why he was expelled from Saudi Arabia. Thanks to that country the cancer metasticized.

So the common people in the West are waiting, really. The common people of the Middle East have a choice. They've seen the nazi regimes at the hands of tribal and religious leaders. The Iraqi people, the Lebanese people, the people of Jordan, the Palestinian and other brave Muslims and Christians and agnostics can form a new Empire just west of Persia based on art, music, math, science, learning, freedom and informed by religious principles of love rather than hate. Or not.

The patience of the American people and the brave citizens of the world who stood by her in Iraq and Afganistan must surprise the despots and journalists, too. Who would have thought in a nation where attention span is impaired by every sort of distraction and materialistic thing, that the common people would remain stalwart, firmly planted, waiting for freedom to take root in a world so far away for people dismissed as beneath the ability to handle choice? Who would have thought? Certainly not the people who have contempt for any common person--American or Iraqi.

Iraq, we wait. Many more people than you know earnestly desire freedom's spread. We wait. We hope you ignore the mouthpieces of doom and gloom and know that they rarely represent the common man, just like we know that Bin Laden rarely represents you. We wait.

Freedom for one is freedom for all. One person deprived of freedom is a loss for all. We wait.