« No Terrorist Here - Just Move Along .... | Main | U.S. Media - So Who's Side Are They On Anyway, Ours Or Our Enemies? »

March 10, 2008

Jihad, Islamism, and the American Free Press

The American mainstream media has shown a deliberate unwillingness to address the ideology of Islamism and its links to Islamist terrorism or Jihad. And in the aftermath of 9/11, instead of identifying and coherently reporting on America's enemy - Islamist terrorism (as defined by the 9/11 Commission Report) and its links to Islamism, the American media has focused almost entirely on being a watchdog to monitor the actions of the American government to protect Americans from terrorists. But why hasn't the AP and much of the rest of the American media address Islamist terror group actions as more than merely a series of isolated incidents in the U.S. and around the world? When will the AP coherently and consistently report on the larger anti-freedom ideology that Islamist terrorism represents?

These and other poignant questions are asked by Jeffrey Imm in his thorough, must read, dressing down of America's press and the American political leadership that has failed to define America's enemy, to define the role of Islamism within Islamist terrorism, and develop a coherent global strategy for these. As Imm points out, as long as the American free press and media is not challenged to address the ideology of Islamism itself, and its use of Sharia, there is the ongoing media gullibility to accept whomever sounds "reasonable" at that moment as representing something other than "Islamic extremism" (whatever "extremism" means):

[...] In the war with global Jihad, words and definitions matter, and in fighting anti-freedom ideologies, the free press and media should be America's greatest ally. Yet the confused and inconsistent reporting on Islamism and Islamist terrorism is another key fault line in America's struggles with global Jihad.

Without a precise definition of the enemy by American political leadership, major segments of the American free press have made their own foreign policy decisions as to who is and is not an enemy, made their own decisions on what terms like "Islamism" and "Jihad" mean (if they use such terms at all), and largely provided "isolated incident"-style reporting on such subjects, with the exception of the largely anti-war colored reporting on Iraq.

So instead of much of the American free press being used to largely address and confront enemy anti-freedom ideologies and their adherents, such media has been manipulated by editorial managers, publishers, and Islamist groups to focus their investigative reporting on the American government's reaction to Islamist terrorism. As much of American government actions are based on a reaction without a defined enemy, there has been plenty of source material for press critiques and for press managers to gain political points against an unpopular administration.

But as addressed last week by leaders of the Washington Post and the Associated Press, the larger issue of "Islamism" itself, its role as the root of "Islamist terrorism" (as defined in the 9/11 Commission Report), and coherent news reporting on the continuing global links between political Islamism and such Islamist terrorism is not even an objective of much of the American free press. The reactive political sniping agenda by much of the American press' reporting not only misses the larger issue, but also fails to understand that anti-freedom ideologies like Islamism are a threat to a free press itself.

Therefore, even when the threat of Islamism to a free press is unquestionable -- such as imprisoned Afghan journalist Sayed Pervez Kambakhsh on death row for "blasphemy" per Islamists in the Afghanistan government -- Islamism is not a concern of such media leaders as Washington Post's Philip Bennett or AP's Tom Curley. These American free press/media leaders' apparent obliviousness to Islamism is symptomatic of the larger problem with much of the American free press when facing Jihad -- as shown in such media shaping of terms, providing a platform for Jihadists, confusing the public on the identity of the enemy, providing opportunities for enemy infiltration, and allowing news reporting tainted by gullibility about Islamism.

[...] Ultimately the fundamental disconnect within the American free press comes back to the American political leadership's failure to clearly and unequivocally define the enemy in the September 18, 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), or in subsequent documents. The singular exception is buried in the 9/11 Commission Report (Notes, Part 12, Note 3, page 562) in the definition of "Islamist Terrorism", defined as "Islamist terrorism is an immediate derivative of Islamism." Of course, when portions of the American news media refuse to acknowledge the very existence of "Islamism", they can hardly report on such an ideology, let alone report in a way that provides coherent context between Islamist terrorism and Islamism.

Posted by Richard at March 10, 2008 8:15 PM