by Eric Margolis
In war, said Napoleon, the moral element and public relations are half the battle. And that was before radio and television. For the first time, a Mideastern antagonist of the United States - Usama bin Laden- has not only mastered public relations, but is using the media as a potent weapon against the world's mightiest military and media power.
Washington had planned to repeat in Afghanistan the success it enjoyed during the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, when the Pentagon monopolized, filtered, and shaped all news coming from the theater of operations. To this day, the number of Iraqis killed by US bombing remains secret.
However, researchers have just learned through the Freedom of Information Act that the US government expressly destroyed Iraq's sewage and water treatment facilities, knowing full well the result would be widespread disease and epidemics. In short, biological warfare. The US refuses to allow Iraq to import chlorine to purify water.
According to the UN, 500,000 Iraqis, mostly children, have died from disease and malnutrition caused by US sanctions. Thousands more Iraqis have died from cancers linked to US depleted uranium munitions. When asked about this huge toll, then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright memorably replied, `the price is worth it.' Is the anthrax teror now afflicting America payback?
In Afghanistan, Taliban stole a march on the US by giving Al-Jazeera, the Arab world's only uncensored TV station, exclusive coverage. Bin Laden uses al-Jazeera and Pakistani media to promote his anti-US cause and challenge America's control of information. As a result, the White House is trying to silence him by the disgraceful recourse of censoring America's media. Almost as shameful, much of the US media has cooperated, reducing its role from useful critics to public relations hacks.
While bin Laden's hate-filled statements are being kept out of the US media, the Pakistani paper `Uumat' published a lengthy interview with him that reveals much about the motivation of America's arch enemy. The interview disproves the idea currently being promoted in the US media that bin Laden's actions are driven by some sort of Islamic totalitarianism and have nothing to do with Israel.
Bin Laden denies his al-Qaida organization was responsible for the suicide
attacks against the US. But he applauds them. Bin Laden suggests the attacks
were made by Americans from either intelligence agencies or `a hidden
government.' According to bin Laden, `we are against the system (US government)
which makes other nations slaves of the United States, or forces them to
mortgage their political and economic freedoms.'
He insists that Israel's repression of Palestinians is the principal reason for his war against America. Bin Laden asserted that US foreign policy is totally controlled by the pro-Israel lobby, whose first priority, he says, is Israel, not America. He claims, implausibly, he is not really fighting Americans, but only Israel and its allies. Meanwhile, Bush is just as implausibly telling Afghans he's not fighting them, just bombing `terrorists.'
Bin Laden's second reason for fighting America is the punishment the US has inflicted on Iraq at, he alleges, Israel's behest: he claims the US killed 1 million Iraqis. US troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, Islam's holy land, come third on bin Laden's hate list.
Such claims would normally be ignored, but thanks to the publicity bin Laden has received, he has unfortunately become a cult figure across the Islamic world, a pure, uncorrupted Muslim David defying the American Goliath; or an Arab Che Guevara, determined to uproot America's omnipresent influence from the Mideast. When bin Laden is eventually killed, he will become even more a figure of veneration and symbol of martyrdom.
Arabs already call bin Laden `the Second Saladin,' after the great general who crushed the Christian crusaders. Bin Laden enjoys a unique asset no other leader of the Muslim World today possesses: respect. He has cleverly crafted for himself the image of an `Ansar,' the true desert warrior of Islam's early era: courageous, austere, honorable, driven by faith. Small bands of such warriors and explorers helped spread Islam from Morocco to China.
In Islamic culture, as in Japan, a noble warrior who battles impossible odds, knowing he will die, is held in highest esteem. Martyrdom for Islam is also venerated by Muslims. Bin Laden has captured both themes in a remarkable display of medieval thinking turbocharged by 21st century public relations.
Westerners see him as a loathsome, murderous fanatic. But to many people in Asia and Africa, including non-Muslims, bin Laden is a defiant, heroic figure who gives some measure of self-respect to those who have little; a mujahid, or holy warrior battling the successor to the British Empire, the American Raj; and an avenger come to smite the United States for all the real and imagined wrongs it has done around the world.
Bin Laden, has proclaimed a jihad, or holy war, against the west, though he has absolutely no authority to issue religious edicts (fatwas). Far worse, bin Laden has taken what are political issues - the suffering of Palestine and Iraq, political repression and foreign control of Saudi Arabia and Egypt - and put them into a religious context. The Saudi militant has raised the banner of jihad against the west, hoping the west's furious reaction would drive his fellow believers into a generalized war against the US and Israel.
This has endangered millions of Muslims living in the west, and provided justification for another jihad - this one directed against Muslims - George Bush's `crusade against terrorism.'
[Eric Margolis is a syndicated foreign affairs columnist and broadcaster, and
author of the just released War at the Top of
the World - The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Tibet which was reviewed in
The Economist, May 13, 2000]
Scott Peterson, "Remains of Toxic Bullets Litter Iraq," Christian Science Monitor, May 15, 2003
Copyright © 2001 Eric Margolis - All Rights
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