Never Ask Why
November 24th, 2008 by Wil Robinson
Seven years after Sept. 11, 2001, American media still refuses to ask the most fundamental question that underlies any attempt at preventing a future attack:
Why did they do it?
We know the reasons spoon-fed to us by neo-conservatives whose apocalyptic vision of a Christian rapture preempts logic and reason:
[…cue ghostly screams and haunting music…]
Islam.
Last Saturday, NBC News reporter Jim Popkin had a golden opportunity to break the cycle of propaganda and inject some much-needed truth. Instead he decided to make every American just a little bit dumber, leaving out relevant context and splicing in subliminal hints aimed to induce fear and suppress real debate.
Covering a story about United 93 hijacker Ziad Jarrah and a video of him recording his martyrdom speech, NBC noted that Jarrah was, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, an “odd fit for Al Qaeda; westernized, with a German girlfriend.”
(“German girlfriend” = white girl. A subliminal hint at age-old fears of racial intermixing…)
So why would a westernized, odd-fit-for-Al Qaeda man choose to go ahead with a suicide mission?
According to NBC, it was because the video “confirms that Jarrah was prodded along by Al Qaeda.” Evidence of such “prodding” were the off-camera words of Al Qaeda members telling Jarrah to use “passion” in his speech and “to try a different approach.”
Wow. Now that’s some serious prodding. That certainly confirms my fears that Al Qaeda is brainwashing their members. No better way to convince someone to commit mass murder and suicide than telling them to “try a different approach” and to use “passion.” It almost sounds like…well, stage directions. Scary stuff.
But far worse than claiming acting tips as proof of Al Qaeda propaganda is the incomplete profile that NBC painted of Jarrah:
“Born in Lebanon and educated in Christian schools, Jarrah was known in his college years to frequent discos and drink beer- an unlikely Islamic extremist.”
(“Unlikely Islamic extremist” = he could be anyone, even your friend or neighbor…)
And that was it. No more details. We are left to believe that although 26-year-old Jarrah was a westernized, middle-class, beer drinker and disco fan, he resorted to suicide terrorism simply because he was an “Islamic extremist.”
Back to the keep-it-simple-stupid answer: Islam.
If we want to really prevent terrorism in the future, the question of “why” is exactly what must be answered. We need to understand what drove Jarrah into this position where he would make a martyrdom tape in the first place. Islamic extremists don’t drink beer and go to discos.
So was it really religion – one this man felt strong enough about to commit his life to, despite his alleged dancing, drinking, and “westernization?”
Or was Jarrah simply an extremist of a different breed? Perhaps a man whose motivations may have differed from other Al Qaeda members, but whose tactics and target made for a marriage of convenience with Osama Bin Laden.
If not religion, what drove Jarrah to act?
Was it childhood memories of residential neighborhoods in his country bombed by the allegedly “neutral” United States Navy during the Israeli invasion of 1982?
Was it the thousands of Iranians that died from the biological and chemical weapons the U.S. government sold to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, or the thousands of Iraqis that died under U.S. imposed economic sanctions in the 1990s? Was it U.S. financial and political support for authoritarian despots in strategic nations, like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak or the Saudi royal family? Was it the massive military support the U.S. gives Israel to “defend” itself from Palestinians – Palestinians that are forced to live in crowded, economically stagnant, and ethnically divided ghettos?
But NBC chose not to delve into these questions. That would have required analysis, investigation, and…truth.
Since 9/11, the media has been cheerleading on behalf of ignorance, repeating the propaganda to rally Westerners ‘round the crucifix by assuring us that we face a timeless clash of good and evil; a fight between an irreconcilable medieval religion and our own fuzzy-feel-good brand of “modern and enlightened” Christianity.
I had hoped that once we were removed from the immediate aftermath of jingoistic fervor and blind patriotism, once the ill-advised invasion of Iraq had reared its ugly head, and once the lies of the Bush administration were exposed as the propaganda tools they were, that America would take a long, hard look at the question of why.
But seven years on, no one seems interested in truth. We are content to propagate misconceptions, ignorance, and lies, as long as the ignorance meshes with our own fears and secures the last reserves of sweet crude.
Ziad Jarrah offers us a lesson in the most basic and fundamental question that we need answered in order to bring an end to terrorism. We need to know why. Otherwise, ill-advised U.S. foreign policy will continue (see Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, Iran, etc.), and our actions will be a better recruitment tool for Al Qaeda than any martyrdom videos ever could.
The reporter, Jim Popkin, ended his NBC report by noting that Jarrah’s video was used as evidence in a “terrorism trial in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.”
Apparently, the irony of ending a story that refused to answer the “whys” by referring to an illegal prison run by the United States on another country’s soil was lost on Popkin.
But then, who cares about lost irony when you’ve also lost journalistic ethics and values?
Tags: Muslims, Ziad Jarrah, extremism, foreign policy, islam