Page 273 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

Afghanistan and 9/11 263

was: how should the U.S. respond to the attacks? More specifically, the question
seemed to be: how should the U.S. utilize its military to most effectively re-
spond to the attacks? The American media and public's response to 911 1 over-
whelmingly preferred a military response.
The question of why the U.S. was targeted was given high priority in media
reporting and editorializing, although the answers presented were radically dif-
ferent depending on whether one looked at the mainstream or Progressive-Left
press. To proclaim that the U.S. was a target because it was an unwanted occu-
pying power in foreign lands was forbidden in most mainstream media commen-
tary, as such explanations were seen as appeasement of the terrorists and defense
of the terror attacks. Those who called for nonviolent solutions were increas-
ingly attacked by media pundits who felt that critics of war were either justify-
ing the attacks or siding with the terrorists. Those questioning war with Af-
ghanistan were often thought of as "un-American" or unpatriotic.
After 9/11, the media deemed Osama bin Laden to be the mastermind be-
hind the terror attacks. His capture was framed as the most important step in
reducing or eliminating the threat of radical Islamist terrorism. Three years after
911 1, mass media outlets seemed to have changed their mind somewhat, framing
bin Laden as one of many players in the world of Islamist terror cells, rather
than the key player. The Los Angeles Times, for example, explored "the strategic
failure to understand and combat A1 Qaeda's evolution" as Osama bin Laden
was said to "serve more as an inspiration figure than a CEO" for international
terrorist networks.47 Years after the 911 1 attacks, media outlets acknowledged
that Islamist terror attacks were occurring throughout the world "with little or no
direct contact with leaders" such as bin Laden and Ayrnan a1 Zawahiri (a close
affiliate of bin Laden). Whereas after September 11 CXN considered bin Laden
to be "at the center of an international coalition of Islamic radicals,'" it later
reconsidered the point, reporting that his wealth was overstated, and that he was
not "thought to be directly financing his terror group with his personal wea~th."~
As of 2004, the New York Times divulged that there existed a "far more complex
picture of A1 Qaeda's status" than was typically presented, granting that bin
Laden and Zawahiri were only a few of the many individuals involved in the
~~OU~.~O
The mainstream media's acknowledgement that Islamist terrorist networks
such as Al Qaeda were (and continue to be) more complex than the conventional
view that portrayed bin Laden as the "terrorist mastermind" were seen in a num-
ber of critical works. An authority on decentralized Islamist networks, award-
winning journalist Jason Burke enlightened his readers on the state of Islamist
militant groups like A1 Qaeda:

even when it was most organized in late 2001, it is important to avoid seeing 'a1
Qaeda' as a coherent and structured terrorist organization with cells every-
where, or to imagine it had subsumed all other groups within its networks. This
would be to profoundly misconceive its nature and the nature of modem Is-
lamic militancy. Bin Laden's group was only one of very many radical Islamic
outfits operating in and from Afghanistan at the time."