Tierney's Spin Lessons

John Tierney has written an intelligent op ed in today's Times (see below) but for one thing. He, like almost every other mainstream journalist, is still being spun by Bushie's spin. Tierney's logic is solid -- if one buys into the prevailing spin that getting Bin Laden and winning a "War on Terrorism" is Bush & Company's objective. It is not and it never has been.

If it were, why, despite dozens of specific warnings before the attacks, did the government do absolutely nothing to warn U.S. citizens of impending attacks or shore up security -- yet key government officials were warned on 9/10 to cancel their 9/11 flights to Washington and to stay off planes? If it were, why did they allow Bin Laden to escape -- numerous documented times -- including the day of 9/11 when Bin Laden met with the CIA in a Dubai hospital and later when Bin Laden and his top al Qaeda leadership were allowed to escape in Afghanistan?

Does anyone truly think even Bush is that incompetent?

Hardly. This is not a case of incompetence. It is a brilliant strategy designed to achieve publicly unstated goals. The more we declare them "incompetent," the more we empower them to continue their game. The more we yell, "idiots!" -- the less chance we will look for a more sinister motive.

The Shrub, under the guidance of Rove, Cheney & Rummy, has learned to play his part well. It is we who have been duped -- over and over again. Until we demand investigations into the activities of this government and it's involvement pre, during, and post 9/11, they will continue to get away with nothing less than murder and treason.

Why do journalists refuse to ask the tough questions? Dan Rather, in the film "9/11: Press for Truth" indicates that after 9/11, journalists were afraid they would be "branded" as unpatriotic; he indicated that journalists feared losing their jobs if they challenged the government. Ask yourself, of what is the government so afraid that they feel the need to threaten journalists seeking to report the truth?

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, people. If we demand accountability from our government, we will get it. It happened during Vietnam and eventually led to ending the war; it happened during Watergate and resulted in the impeachment of Nixon. It will happen again -- if we act in numbers.

If we want our nation to once again be safe, if we want our civil liberties restored, it we want our children to grow up in an America even remotely resembling the America of our own youth, we must act -- NOW.

This is not a partisan Republican or Democratic issue. There is plenty of blame to spread around both parties. It is an American issue. It is an issue, despite what Dick Cheney says, of patriotism.

What we need is for each of us to be as heroic as our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the firemen and policemen who died on 9/11. We need to muster the courage to stand up and fight, without fear, for the 9/11 families who need answers and demand that our elected officials be accountable to all of us -- soldiers, 9/11 survivors, men, women and children -- the people of the United States of America.

America is not America without people who fight to keep her free and true to her values. That's our job as Americans.

"If not us, who? If not now, when?"


Osama's Spin Lessons
By John Tierney
The New York Times

Somewhere, Osama bin Laden must be smiling. Or at least he will be whenever his couriers deliver the next batch of press clippings.

Once again he has beaten America at an American game: public relations. He may be sitting powerlessly in a cave, but his image is as scary as ever. He doesn’t even have to cut a new video. He released an old one last week, the equivalent of a fading musician putting out a greatest-hits album, only this one’s getting played every hour.

Last night, President Bush paid him homage by quoting his warning that America will face “defeat and disgrace forever” if it loses in Iraq. Bush himself called the war on terror a “struggle for civilization,” and said it was essential to ”maintain the way of life enjoyed by free nations.”

It was just the kind of apocalyptic language favored by bin Laden, except that, for all his delusions, he might realize that American civilization is not really in jeopardy. Americans can try to copy him, but they don’t understand his rhetorical technique.

They continually misinterpret his equine theory of international relations: “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.” This is supposedly a reason America was attacked on Sept. 11 — it was perceived as weak for failing to respond to Al Qaeda’s earlier attacks — and why it can’t leave Iraq.

If we falter in Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney explained to Tim Russert on Sunday, the war on terror will falter because people will say: “My gosh, the United States hasn’t got the stomach for the fight. Bin Laden’s right, Al Qaeda’s right, the United States has lost its will and will not complete the mission.”

But bin Laden knows something else the Bush administration hasn’t figured out: You don’t actually have to be the strong horse. You just have to look stronger. You can be weak, you can be pummeled in a fight, but as long as your opponent looks more scared than you, you can save face by simply declaring victory.

As an act of war, the attack on Sept. 11 was a blunder by Al Qaeda, and not merely because of the counterattack that destroyed Al Qaeda’s training camps and ousted the Taliban. It also alienated former jihadist allies in the Arab world, and caused a rift within Al Qaeda.

One of its senior members, Abu al-Walid al-Masri, broke with bin Laden and accused him of having an “extreme infatuation” with international publicity. The attack, as Fawaz Gerges notes in Foreign Policy magazine, demonstrated that “bin Laden was prepared to sacrifice Afghanistan and Mullah Omar at the altar of his public relations campaign.”

But at least bin Laden knew his P.R. Al Qaeda wasn’t a serious military threat to America, but it could play one on television. As Al Qaeda’s losses mounted and America recovered from the attack, bin Laden and his cohorts didn’t let the facts get in the way of their campaign to promote fear (and themselves). They hid in caves and proclaimed themselves champions.

America, meanwhile, accentuated the negative. Instead of declaring victory against terrorists after routing the Taliban and sending bin Laden into hiding, it invaded Iraq, reinvigorating Al Qaeda with a new tool for recruiting. Instead of putting the terrorist risk in perspective, Bush (with the full cooperation of Democrats and the press) set an impossible standard for making America safe.

“We’re on the offense against the terrorists on every battlefront,” Bush said last week, “and we’ll accept nothing less than complete victory.”

When you define victory that way, when you treat one attack from a disorganized band of fanatics as a menace to civilization, you’ve doomed yourself to defeat and caused more damage than they could. You can’t completely stop terrorism, but you can scare people into giving up liberties, wasting huge sums of money and sacrificing more lives than would be lost in a terrorist attack.

Take it from bin Laden, who bragged in 2004 that it was “easy to provoke and bait this administration.”

“All that we have to do,” he said, “is to send two mujahedeen to the farthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written Al Qaeda, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses.” And then Al Qaeda, no matter what losses it has suffered, will come off once again looking like the strong horse.

Photo credit: John Tierney. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Also See:

• September 11th, Our Report by Marc Ash

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