Outrage of the week. The month, even.
Word of Bush's expressed (and shot down) hope to Tony Blair of blowing up the al- Jazeera headquartres in Qatar. The UK gag order makes the reports look pretty credible -- as does the argument from some British officials that the exchange took place but that Bush was joking. The Bushies' offended denials, by contrast, mean nothing at this point. Amazing. As the Guardian tells it:
The White House meeting, in April 2004, took place at a time British officials and military commanders were appalled by US tactics in Iraq, particularly the assault on Falluja. Pictures shown on al-Jazeera of the attack infuriated US generals, who accused the station of broadcasting anti-US propaganda. General Kimmet, the US commander, was reported to have demanded the removal of al-Jazeera journalists from Falluja.
Al-Jazeera staff yesterday held protests demanding an investigation into the reports. At the station's HQ in Doha they held pictures of Sami al-Haj, a colleague who is an inmate at Guantánamo Bay, and Tarek Ayoub, an al-Jazeera journalist killed in April 2003 when a US missile hit his office in Baghdad. The US state department said the air strike was a mistake.
There's Bush's commitment to "freedom" for you. He wanted to blow up the closest thing to a free media the Arab World has. Juan Cole says of al-Jazeera:
Aljazeera is a widely misunderstood Arabic television channel that is mainly characterized by a quaint 1950s-style pan-Arab nationalism. It is not a fundamentalist religious channel, though it does host one old-time Muslim Brother, Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Its main peculiarity in local terms is that it will air all sides of a political issue and allow frank criticism of Middle Eastern politicians as well as of Western ones. It is the only place in the Arab media where one routinely hears Israeli spokesmen (speaking very good Arabic, typically) addressing their concerns and point of view to Arab audiences.
Most of Aljazeera's programming is presented by natty men in business suits or good-looking, chic Arab women in fashionable Western clothes... The news is often criticial of the United States, though the journalists like controversy and are perfectly capable of asking fundamentalists and nationalists from the region very hard questions. The channel is one of the few places where you can sometimes see frank debate among Sunni Arab, Shiite and Kurdish Iraqis (the Lord knows we don't see it on US news!) Some Aljazeera journalists may have been sympathetic to radical Muslim groups, but mainly on nationalist and anti-imperialist grounds. These people don't look like adherents of political Islam for the most part.
A lot of Arab State citizens are also sympathetic to radical Muslim groups, however much Bush and company would deny it. A media that reflects this fact isn't the problem. The question is whether al Qaeda and its affiliates are discrediting themselves through dumbass moves like the Amman bombings faster than the Americans are strengthening jihadis' appeal through dumbass moves like killing 800 or so Iraqi civilians in the Falluja offensive or plotting to blow up al-Jazeera in Qatar. I (maybe naively) still think it's the former, but sometimes I really wonder.
The White House meeting, in April 2004, took place at a time British officials and military commanders were appalled by US tactics in Iraq, particularly the assault on Falluja. Pictures shown on al-Jazeera of the attack infuriated US generals, who accused the station of broadcasting anti-US propaganda. General Kimmet, the US commander, was reported to have demanded the removal of al-Jazeera journalists from Falluja.
Al-Jazeera staff yesterday held protests demanding an investigation into the reports. At the station's HQ in Doha they held pictures of Sami al-Haj, a colleague who is an inmate at Guantánamo Bay, and Tarek Ayoub, an al-Jazeera journalist killed in April 2003 when a US missile hit his office in Baghdad. The US state department said the air strike was a mistake.
There's Bush's commitment to "freedom" for you. He wanted to blow up the closest thing to a free media the Arab World has. Juan Cole says of al-Jazeera:
Aljazeera is a widely misunderstood Arabic television channel that is mainly characterized by a quaint 1950s-style pan-Arab nationalism. It is not a fundamentalist religious channel, though it does host one old-time Muslim Brother, Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Its main peculiarity in local terms is that it will air all sides of a political issue and allow frank criticism of Middle Eastern politicians as well as of Western ones. It is the only place in the Arab media where one routinely hears Israeli spokesmen (speaking very good Arabic, typically) addressing their concerns and point of view to Arab audiences.
Most of Aljazeera's programming is presented by natty men in business suits or good-looking, chic Arab women in fashionable Western clothes... The news is often criticial of the United States, though the journalists like controversy and are perfectly capable of asking fundamentalists and nationalists from the region very hard questions. The channel is one of the few places where you can sometimes see frank debate among Sunni Arab, Shiite and Kurdish Iraqis (the Lord knows we don't see it on US news!) Some Aljazeera journalists may have been sympathetic to radical Muslim groups, but mainly on nationalist and anti-imperialist grounds. These people don't look like adherents of political Islam for the most part.
A lot of Arab State citizens are also sympathetic to radical Muslim groups, however much Bush and company would deny it. A media that reflects this fact isn't the problem. The question is whether al Qaeda and its affiliates are discrediting themselves through dumbass moves like the Amman bombings faster than the Americans are strengthening jihadis' appeal through dumbass moves like killing 800 or so Iraqi civilians in the Falluja offensive or plotting to blow up al-Jazeera in Qatar. I (maybe naively) still think it's the former, but sometimes I really wonder.
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