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Jewish World Review June 17, 2005 / 10 Sivan, 5765 Welcome to the war on image By Diana West
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Finally, our guards at Guantanamo Bay are getting the hang of
showing "reverence and respect" toward that "fragile piece of
delicate art" (military-speak for the Quran), and, wouldn't you know
it, our politicians and pundits, from House Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi and Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel to Tom Friedman and Bill
Kristol, are angling to put a lock on Gitmo.
Why? It's an "international embarrassment," says Sen. Patrick Leahy
(D-Vt.), who should know. His colleague, Sen. Richard Durbin,
(D-Ill.), is himself so internationally embarrassed that he compared
the terrorist detainee facility to Nazi deaths camps, Communist
gulags and Khmer Rouge killing fields.
And so what if closing Gitmo lets hundreds of jihadists out of their
prison cages and into their terror cells? "Sure, a few may come back
to haunt us," writes Friedman. But being haunted — which presumably
requires some additional number of American dead to do the haunting
— is apparently a risk worth taking in order to win the war.
I'm not talking about the so-called "war on terror." It seem there's
been a change in focus. Islamic jihad is out. The war on "image" is
in. And, according to the anti-Gitmo-nists, we're getting creamed.
Go figure: "They" kill people over a soggy Quran, and "we" lose the
image war — and all over the world, according to Sen. Hagel. He
thinks closing Guantanamo is the only way to win World Image War I.
That's because closing the detention center would "give us a clean
slate in the Muslim world," as Nancy Pelosi said, revealing an
ignorance of history so vast and untamed that facts alone would
perish there. Clean slate — like on Sept. 10.
Projecting power is not the same thing as winning a popularity
contest. Nor is winning a popularity contest the same thing as
winning hearts and minds — at home where it really counts, or
abroad — which seems to be another point of desperate confusion.
But in our poll-driven age of celebrity worship, the popularity
contest is becoming the preferred forum for geopolitics, a kind of
"Survivor"-slash-"Who Wants to Be a Superpower?" reality show for
world leaders. If this is the case, by all means go for that "clean
slate" and close Gitmo. Miss Congeniality would do the same. But
don't stop there.
After all, reverence and respect, even surrender, only go so far.
More sensitivity is needed as well. In a recent meeting with Daniel
Sutherland, head of the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties division of
the Department of Homeland Security, American University's Akbar
Ahmed had some suggestions, beginning, according to an online report
in the Pakistani Daily Times, with pretty much eliminating Muslim
profiling at airports. This, of course, would do nothing to spare my
own white-haired mother and white-haired mother-in-law from the next
checkpoint body search, but the boost to world image would be
colossal. "You simply cannot humiliate Muslims like this," Akbar
said, describing a "peak level of anger" in "the young generation on
the edge." Just one more pat-down and they'll blow. He also
suggested "more social and cultural contacts" between government
officials and American Muslims, and an unspecified reading list on
Islam.
"When I stated that Islam had suffered a major setback after Sept.
11 (for a grossly un-Islamic act of violence), that every Muslim was
in the dock as a result ... I was challenged by some Arabs and
Pakistanis," he writes. "They" — Muslims in Cleveland, Ohio —
"called Sept. 11 a glorious event for Islam. The taking of innocent
lives was justified, they argued, as Sept. 11 was the continuation
of a full-scale Islamic war taking place against Israel, which is
backed by the United States. I heard a similar debate when the
Muslim Council of Britain hosted a dinner for me in London in July
2002."
Maybe this last bit helps explain why the Queen of England this
month bestowed a knighthood on Iqbal Sacranie, general secretary of
the Muslim Council of Britain. "Sir" Iqbal Sacranie: a body blow in
the war on image. And also why, as Sutherland reportedly told Akbar,
Homeland Security "has undertaken many measures to eliminate racial
profiling." I think I see a strategy emerging. Little by little,
we'll win this war on image. So what if we no longer recognize
ourselves.
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JWR contributor Diana West is a columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Times. Comment by clicking here. © 2005, Diana West |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
