Page 126 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

116 Chapter 5

groups are concerned with "winning" outside of any tangible grievances with
the U.S. are serious misrepresentations that must be shed. The myth of the ter-
rorist who lacks any real reason for their actions outside of irrational fanaticism
was a particularly large problem in portrayals of the war in Afghanistan, and
continues to be a problem in the war with Iraq. In order to promote a more ex-
tensive and rich debate, long-standing U.S. policy throughout the Middle East
must be taken into account when understanding the ideology and agenda behind
Islamist groups.
Beneath the labeling of resistance forces as "terrorist" lies another problem
of internal inconsistency. Traditionally, terrorism has been defined as attacks on
civilian populations in the effort to coerce or intimidate a populace into submis-
sion, and it such a label that American media has chosen to appropriate. Ameri-
can media, however, often inaccurately label attacks on the U.S. troops in Iraq
as terror, rather than as acts of warfare. Such was the case when Michael
Holmes of CAN criticized "terror attacks. . . on American invaders," ignoring
the traditional distinction when defining terrorism as attacks on civilian rather
than military targets. Nonetheless, it is crucial to make such a distinction when
determining what does and does not constitute terrorism. The Bush administra-
tion and the mass media definition of terrorism as any attacks against the
American military is inherently problematic.
Challenges to politicized definitions of terrorism that defme only enemies
of the U.S. as terrorist have been relegated to the margins of the corporate me-
dia. Hence, Sean Gonsalves of the Cape Cod Times suggests that, "U.S. forces
were not fighting 'terrorists' in Iraq but nationalists using low-tech terror tactics
against a vastly superior U.S. military. Gonsalves continues: "Neocons have
turned reality on its head, convincing the true believers that the U.S. occupation
of Iraq is reducing terrorism. It should be clear to anyone without ideological
blinders on that U.S. military presence in Iraq is actually fueling terrori~m."~~
The labeling of nationalist fighters as intrinsically "terrorist" because of
their resistance to the U.S. occupation should be discarded in favor of a more
complex understanding of nationalistic motivations driving the attacks. This has
been done from time to time in the mainstream press, although much less so
than should be the case. Jim Sciutto of ABC World News Tonight, for example,
explains that "many of the insurgents in Falluja are not hard-core terrorists, but
people who've joined the cause after losing relatives to U.S. attacks--or who
simply want to defend their home^."^'
The claim that resistance groups engage in terrorism by primarily targeting
civilians has been challenged by other intelligence sources as well. A report
from the Center for Strategic and International Studies entitled "The Developing
Iraqi Insurgency" examined the period from September 2003 through October
2004, analyzing the number of resistance attacks and people killed, to find that
only 4.1 percent of the attacks in that period were directed against civilians, as
opposed to 75 percent which were directed against coalition forces.82 Writing in
the Progressive magazine Left Hook, Junaid Alam argues that "This reality is at
striking odds with the general picture painted in the press of a narcissistic, mind-
As
less and sinister insurgency simply bent on chaos and destru~tion."~~ Patrick