the saudi audience for terror
by David Perlmutter
Tuesday, June 22, 2004 11:47 AM

 
Friends--occasionally, even writing for the mainstream press, you can sneak in a subversive point (see below). We all know what the Saudi Leadership has been up to--sponsoring terror for half a century. We also recognize their double game of claiming to be "cracking down" on terror while winking at it at home and funding it abroad. (Check out Robert Baer's book "Sleeping with the Enemy" and read the shrieks' own words on memri.org.). But, at the same time, we pretend that the people of Saudi Arabia are just victims, eager for democracy and pluralism. This is despite Newsweek revealing a secret poll conducted by the Saudi government which found support for Bin laden at 50%! Anyway, I thought someone needed to point out that in the Arab world you can get a 100,000 people to march chanting "Death to America" or "Kill the Jews" but you can’t get more than few hundred to oppose even the most outrageous acts of terror. I wonder why? --dp
 
TERRORISTS TREAT WEB AS WEAPON-- AND WE WATCH

(op-ed)

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, Jun. 22, 2004

By David D. Perlmutter

 

I have to wonder if some university in the Middle East is teaching courses on "Webmastering for Terrorists" and "Digital Journalism for Jihad."

            "[T]he infidel got his fair treatment" was the caption accompanying pictures of a body and a separated head said to be those of American Paul M. Johnson Jr., posted on a Web site affiliated with an al-Qaeda group. Within minutes, the story - if not the actual photos - headlined every newscast and news Web site on the planet.

            Of course, terrorism has always been about theater: terrorists acquire money and recruits by drawing media attention. But now we have a frightening convergence of 21st-century communications technology and caveman ethics.

            Back in the early 1990s, I posed an ethical dilemma for discussion by a class of journalism students: What if a terrorist group demanded that you air its propaganda or it would kill a hostage? How naive that query seems in our age of pixels, satellites, cell phones and the Internet.

            Terrorists have a webbed, wireless and digital platform for all their violence and rhetoric. Anytime, anywhere, any madman with a laptop, a modem and an axe can horrify the world. We know that; worse, the madmen know it, too.

            Another factor in the terrorists' favor is the expansion in what we define as "the media." People - especially younger audiences - get their news from a fragmented hodgepodge of sources, from Matt Drudge to Iraqi blogs to friends' e-mail. Print and electronic editors no longer have days or even an evening to decide what is "fit to print" or broadcast.

            We couldn't censor terrorists even if we wanted to.

            In addition, the war on terrorism has demonstrated a particular phenomenon known in conventional warfare as "educating the enemy." Simply put, when you defeat someone, you also teach him how to fight better next time. Many terrorist organizations have realized that attacking "hard targets" like military bases is logistically costly.

            The softest targets of all are ordinary foreign civilians. Not coincidentally, innocents are also the targets with the most built-in attraction for press coverage. The killers of Paul Johnson followed a script that has become familiar. The captors post pictures of the captive in the trademark orange jumpsuit. He appeals for his life. They set a deadline far enough in the future to allow networks and newspapers to contact all the hostages' relatives and let them plead for the victim. The tension in the drama is brought to a rapid boil, but not stretched out so long that the public loses interest. Then there is the bloody finale followed by a coda "message" that is reprinted or aired by the world media.

            It's slick showmanship and low budget: the deadliest reality show of them all.

            So, how can the "terror plays" be cancelled?

            We can't defend every American who lives or travels abroad, nor can we build a moat or wall around the United States.

            Even killing a terrorist leader, as Saudi authorities claim to have done in the Johnson case, will not destroy the hydra of terrorism.

            There is, however, one way to convince terrorists that their tactics undermine their cause. That message cannot be delivered by cruise missiles or diplomats. It must be sent via visible public outrage in the nations and among the peoples for whom the terrorists claim to fight.

            Official condemnations are not enough. A huge, authentic, unstaged repudiation of the killing of Paul Johnson and condemnation of the ideology of perpetrators by the Saudi people - hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens demonstrating against terrorism - would do more for the long-term cause of antiterrorism than any action by any government. That such a popular uprising in favor of human decency has never occurred in Saudi Arabia (or in Iraq for that matter) further encourages terrorists to believe that they are following their God's commandments and their people's will.

            Al-Qaeda's reality show, thus, is winning the media war - but only because its audience lets them.

 

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David D. Perlmutter (dperlmu@lsu.edu) is a senior fellow at the Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs.