When the media battle is joined

MEDIA attitudes on the battering of Afghanistan fascinate me quite as much as they did when Operation Desert Storm began a decade ago in spectacular style. UN Secretary General Perez de Cueller’s final press conference at Baghdad airport was as clear an indication as one could expect that the pounding of Iraq would begin the next day but some of us held on to the logic that the situation would be defused at the last minute.

In the current media blitz some outstanding acts of heroism have been overlooked. Indeed the BBC slowly brought into focus a correspondent who clearly deserves a Nobel Prize. Brian Barron, in fatigues and headgear meant for supersonic aircraft, made an audacious appearance on USS Enterprise. The marines were playing games on the deck and cheering every plane that took off, creating decorous flares along the trajectory, leaving Barron breathless with excitement. Only malicious folk would suggest that Barron was part of the war propaganda designed to scare the Taliban. Psychological warfare is part of the strategy to soften up the enemy.

Wolfe Blitzer of the CNN does better than most on his Late Edition. The other night he put the fear of God in the heart of every Muslim dictator or potentate by a frightening reference to the possibility of nuclear attack under some circumstances. He asked former NATO chief Wesley Clark about the situation during the Gulf War when “all bets were off; when there was some fear that Saddam might resort to chemical weapons”. Gen. Clark responded: “Yes, a nuclear response was considered”. Osama bin Laden must have quaked.

The story doing the rounds that the first lady actually spent the night of September 11 in a White House bunker, in a kneeling position is probably apocryphal and even nasty. Since Vice President Dick Cheney was in the same bunker, clutching his pacemaker, it makes a particularly compromising image of the first lady, even as her husband, the President, hopped from cantonment to cantonment in a credible information the “Air Force One is next”. Surly there were valid grounds to hide the President and Air Force One behind the tallest bushes in the interest of global freedom. “Dear God” Dick Cheney screamed to William Safire who turned up in the White House bunker for his usual scoop. He knows all the underground passages from his Nixon days and his presence in the nether regions must have been very comforting. “How did they get the code for Air Force One?” Cheney was in a state of hysteria. This happened on September 12. But on September 26 the White House announced that the threat to Air Force One was not real “but it was real at the time”. If this sounds like double dutch it is probably deliberate, designed to keep the dignity of the world’s commander-in-chief.

Smooth and silken coverage of war, suitably laced with propaganda to keep our spirits up, which is the noble purpose of the CNN and BBC, is now sought to be distorted by a totally alien intervention by some Arab outfit called Al Jazeera TV. They claim to have footage of the first lady in the bunker and the President on the commode in Air Force One as if some insider would be leaking footage such as this from the aircraft’s internal security system. Balderdash. Show us if you have the footage or be prepared to face the consequences.

Already, Al Jazeera has been chastised by White House spokesman Ari Fleicher. To defend freedom, some freedoms will have to be curbed. Colin Powell has said Al Jazeera will have to be reined in.
The world was a calmer place with the CNN and BBC furnishing us our daily, 24-hour dole, and we had to do nothing but be relaxed, passive recipients of images. From where has this subversive Arab network surfaced, mesmerising the entire Arab world nailing the propaganda of our credible CNN and BBC, reporting the arrest of American Special forces? Obviously, the story was denied. But the Al Jazeera correspondent in Afghanistan, Ahmad Maufaq Zaidan, appeared on TV and stoutly defended his story. The man should be arrested!

Worse, they are now showing videos of Osama bin Laden (S. Arabia), Zawahiri (Egypt) and Abu Ghais (Kuwait) exhorting the Muslims to mindless subversion.

Fleicher says this sort of propaganda encourages terrorism. Tony Blair, meanwhile, has taken quite the opposite attitude. He invited Sami Haddad, Al Jazeera’s well-known anchor for lunch and an interview where the PM allowed himself to be duly grilled. What magic does the Al Jazeera possess? I suppose when Arabs encourage terrorism it is a threat to the civilised world. But when John Simpson of the BBC does, it has a higher, nobler purpose.

Remember his half-hour interview with Abakan? The Serb gangster embarked on the noble cause of organising rape camps in Bosnia and Kosovo on a scale as to put any Jehadi to shame. We must make clear distinction between apples and oranges. When Simpson encourages terrorism, it is one thing. When Al Jazeera does, it is quite another.

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