IMAGINE if, on D-Day, the Nazis had been allowed to place camera teams on Omaha Beach – with our suffering soldiers forbidden to interfere. What if, on top of that, the Germans had invented American atrocities against French civilians – and our own officials defended their right to do so in the name of press freedom?
That’s the situation with al-Jazeera in Iraq.
Staffed by embittered exiles and pan-Arabist ideologues – the last Nasserites – al-Jazeera is so consumed by hatred of America and the West that the network would rather see Iraq collapse into a bloodbath than permit the emergence of a democracy sponsored by Washington.
Despite his slaughter of a million-and-a-half Muslims in wars and campaigns of repression, al-Jazeera cheered for Saddam during Operation Iraqi Freedom, inventing Iraqi victories. Its staff reacted with horror to the fall of Baghdad – and suppressed film clips of celebrating Arabs.
Since then, al-Jazeera has glamorized Islamic terrorists (who, were they ever to come to power, would close al-Jazeera and butcher its staff) while portraying the Baathist campaign of murder and sabotage as a noble freedom struggle.
Al-Jazeera is so bigoted and morally debased that its reporters and producers delight in Coalition casualties, in dead Iraqi doctors and engineers and (above all) in dead Kurds.
Al-Jazeera not only encourages the assassination of American soldiers, but pulls out all the stops to excite anti-U.S. hatred throughout the Arabic-speaking world.
The response of our own officials in Iraq? Al-Jazeera is only exercising freedom of the press. Isn’t that why we fought to bring down Saddam?
This is idiocy, a perverse political correctness based upon a rejection of common sense.
Press freedom is a treasure of our civilization, but it’s also distinctly a product of our civilization – one that doesn’t always export well. It works in our society for numerous reasons.
First, despite undeniable excesses, there’s a fundamental respect for facts in our media. Second, our press is not rewarded for encouraging mass murder. Third, we have libel and hate-crime laws that work. Fourth, the great majority of journalists take pride in the standards of their profession – despite popular notions to the contrary.
We also have healthy, vigorous, combative competition. In the end, the members of our media keep each other honest. One should never underestimate the jealousy journalists feel toward one another as a factor in exposing fabrications. The glee with which reporters unmask the sins of more successful colleagues is an unappreciated virtue of the profession.
Al-Jazeera has no such controls. It’s Pravda without the truth – in living color. As long as the network glorifies its host, the Emir of Qatar, and avoids anything beyond the most lightweight criticism of select Arab leaders, it’s allowed to incite hatred, assassination and genocide.
Facts are never allowed to interfere.
When I toured al-Jazeera’s studios in January, the lack of interest in objective reporting was startling. All the staff cared about was popularity and power. It was unreality TV at its worst. They bragged about their technology (“Better than the BBC!”) and their influence, but never mentioned integrity, veracity or responsibility. It was the Nazi propaganda ministry on amphetamines.
Is a media organ that consistently lies, preaches hatred and encourages political murders entitled to unrestricted access? Iraq’s own leaders don’t think so. Yet Paul Bremer has protected al-Jazeera in the name of some fairyland notion of a free media.
Whether we speak of a free media or a free society, freedom comes with responsibility. Those who decline the responsibility forfeit their claim to freedom. We often forget this elementary contract. Al-Jazeera ignores it entirely.
By alarming our closest allies with staged footage and Big Lies, al-Jazeera drove the Bush administration to retreat from Fallujah – creating a terrorist city-state, a plague boil on the body of free Iraq. Al-Jazeera triumphed by inventing tales of slaughtered infants and rabid attacks on civilians. We let them get away with it unchallenged.
In an age when the global media has become an ever-more-powerful strategic factor, we need to re-examine assumptions of press freedom so peculiar to English-speaking civilization that they even don’t apply fully in continental Europe.
We need not accommodate hate-speech overseas any more than we would tolerate it here at home. And we have every right to demand respect for the truth.
If the rules essential to a free press are ignored by al-Jazeera and others, they forfeit any claim to press protections.
Al-Jazeera has become the most powerful ally of terror in the world – even more important than Saudi financiers. We’re foolish if we do not recognize it as such.
We should not interfere if the new Iraqi government decides to place restrictions on al-Jazeera. Soon enough, we ourselves may need to recognize that “journalists” with deadly agendas should be classified as enemy combatants. If the War on Terror really is a war of ideas, we shouldn’t let our enemies win with lies.
This is not an argument against freedom of the press, but against murderous propaganda. Despite the quivering alarm such a proposition will excite in the faculty lounge, it really isn’t hard to tell the difference between honest attempts to report the news and incitement to genocide.
Apologists for al-Jazeera are legion, of course. Even though the network never seriously criticizes Arab terrorists, Arab hate speech, torture by Arab governments, Arab corruption or Arab atrocities. (Those are all legitimate forms of cultural expression, you see . . . )
In the end, the most tragic factor of all is that, while al-Jazeera prompts the murder of individual American soldiers, it’s simultaneously poisoning the entire Arab world by reinforcing the fatal Arab addiction to blaming others for every home-brewed disaster.
To spite the “Great Satan America,” al-Jazeera is willing to let the Middle East speed into Hell. We need to apply the brakes.
Ralph Peters is the author of “Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace.”