Losing the Propaganda War
Reader comment on item: Winning the Propaganda War [versus Radical Islam]

Submitted by Reuben Horne (Australia), Dec 27, 2005 at 20:21

Dr Pipes,

It strikes me that when George W Bush suggested to Tony Blair that they attack Al Jazeera as it was a source of propaganda for insurgents and terrorists and the mouthpiece for Osama Bin Laden he might have been onto something. Certainly during WW2 the Allies made a habit of attacking places from which Nazi propaganda was disseminated and even dropped leaflets containing pornography and misinformation on their enemies to break down morale. Of course Tony Blair quickly dissuaded Dubya from the aforementioned move logical though it might be. Bad publicity would result - and given the liberal media's track record Dubya would evenly be justified in considering bombing them - as in love with our enemies as they seem to be.

True patriotism and civic virtue is the meat in the proverbial sandwich between the severe diffusion and dislocation of identity that results from multiculturalism and relentless attacks of entrenched ideologues whether their goal be an Islamic Umma or a Communist Utopia. Citizens who are in possession of either patriotic pretensions or notions of public service to their country in the west are regarded as at best paroqial and antiquated (or country and out of date). However more and more so a demonstration of these values is liable to earn you the labels: ignorant, bigot, extremist, nazi, racist and warmonger. The true patriot then is manacled his or her actions subject to the public scrutiny of his enemy. The self hating westerner is a lobby that is so large and powerful that now movies directed at satisfying its hunger for anti western propaganda are capable of generating huge profits.

The western media itself then by and large produces a product that is not entirely unfriendly to the Islamists having to meet the needs of rabidly anti American and pro Islamic audiences. Little evolution has gone on since the 1960s and all the lessons of the Vietnam War unremarkable as they were (such as the fact that sometimes bombs go astray and innocent people die in war) are reiterated endlessly. Television helped lose that war, and by God if they're not gonna help us lose this war as well.
Cordially,
Reuben Horne.

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Daniel Pipes replies:

I addressed this issue four years ago, at http://www.danielpipes.org/article/103, and suggested a less military policy:

--In Qatar, the home of al-Jazeera television, Osama bin Laden's mouthpiece, pressure has to be put on the government to promote the teachings of a moderate sheikh rather than those of the entrenched extremist Yusuf al-Qaradawi ("On the hour of judgment, Muslims will fight the Jews and kill them").