How The Media Failed America Before 9/11 and After

hubris (ὕβρις), according to its modern usage, is exaggerated self pride or self-confidence (overbearing pride), often resulting in fatal retribution. In Ancient Greece, "hubris" referred to actions taken in order to shame the victim, thereby making oneself seem superior.

Hubris was a crime in classical Athens. It was considered the greatest sin of the ancient Greek world. The category of acts constituting hubris for the ancient Greeks apparently broadened from the original specific reference to molestation of a corpse, or a humiliation of a defeated foe, to molestation, or "outrageous treatment", in general. The meaning was further generalized in its modern English usage to apply to any outrageous act or exhibition of pride or disregard for basic moral law. Such an act may be referred to as an "act of hubris", or the person committing the act may be said to be hubristic. Ate, Greek for 'ruin, folly, delusion', is the action performed by the hero, usually because of his/her hubris, or great pride, that leads to his/her death or downfall. Hubris - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror (Brassey's, 2004; ISBN 1-57488-849-8) is a book originally published anonymously, but authored by Michael Scheuer, a 22-year CIA veteran who ran the Counterterrorist Center's bin Laden station from 1996 to 1999.

Scheuer describes his thesis this way:

"Imperial Hubris is overwhelmingly focused on how the last several American presidents have been very ill-served by the senior leaders of the Intelligence Community. Indeed, I resigned from an Agency I love in order to publicly damn the feckless 9/11 Commission, which failed to find any personal failure or negiligence among Intelligence Community leaders even though dozens of serving officers provided the commissioners with clear documentary evidence of that failure."[1]

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The book is highly critical of the Bush Administration's handling and characterization of the War on Terrorism, and of its simplistic portrayal of Bin Laden as "evil" and "hating freedom." The book is notable in criticizing the idea that Islamist terrorists are attacking Western societies because of what they are rather than for their foreign policies. Scheuer writes:

"The fundamental flaw in our thinking about Bin Laden is that "Muslims hate and attack us for what we are and think, rather than what we do." Muslims are bothered by our modernity, democracy, and sexuality, but they are rarely spurred to action unless American forces encroach on their lands. It's American foreign policy that enrages Osama and al-Qaeda, not American culture and society."

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Imperial Hubris - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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The Root Causes of America's Failure

THE PENETRATION AND MOLLIFICATION OF AMERICA

As I described in an earlier chapter, the country's failure to respond was caused, by a jihadist penetration, among other factors. The question at hand is: Why did this penetration succeed? Why was the United States not aware of it and facing it from the beginning? A full review of the process of penetration will show a stream of events, one leading to and reinforcing another. For example, there is a question of finances: The early Wahabi money targeted a number of nerve centers such as universities and community and religious organizations. If we examine that first wave from the end of the 1970's until the early 1990's, we find that not only was it not confronted, but it was not even on the national security agenda. The government's failure to act was caused by an overarching mechanism that mollified U.S. responses to terrorism if it was jihad related. One can compare easily:

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When the jihad terrorists hit the World Trade Center in 1993, it did not cause an all-out mobilization against the Islamist networks at home or around the world. When the Khobar Towers were attacked in 1994, again, there was no mobilization against Islamist networks. But when paramilitary units committed crimes in Haiti during the same year, U.S. carriers headed toward the island and performed a regime change, reinstalling Bertand Aristide. That same year, half a million black Africans had already been exterminated in southern Sudan by the Islamist Front of Khartoum. No U.S. or western intervention saved them -- a no-fly zone was not even established to stop the Sudanese Sukhoi sorties and napalm attacks against civilians. However, tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers did intervene subsequently in Bosnia to save "white" Muslim Europeans from being overrun by Serbian "Orthodox" militias. In America's courts, during the 1990's, jihadists from Egypt and other countries received political asylum -- asylum that was denied Christians from the Middle East. In 1998 and 2000, American diplomats and servicemen were massacred by al Qaeda, but the United States allowed the Taliban regime to continue in Afghanistan. By 1999 a million non-Arab Africans had been slaughtered in Sudan, but U.S. forces were intervening in Muslim Kosovo. The Islamist regime in Khartoum burned entire villages using Tupolev bombers; these same Islamists were arrested after 2001 as part of a roundup of a terror network.

These are just some failures at the national and international levels. In sum, it makes little sense to blame the foot soldiers of national security when the jihad influence had diverted the centers of strategic decisions from detecting or even conceptualizing their geopolitical plans. It was not just that the United States failed to prevent terrorism; jihad strategies have completely derailed national security for an entire decade.

THE MEDIA FAILURE

The media informs the public and teaches the nation on matters of national importance. It provides the world's headlines to go with the morning coffee and welcomes people with the nightly news when they come back from work. The media shapes the public's vision of world affairs and its priorities. But if we checked the archives back to 1990, what would we find on jihad terrorism? If we explore the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles times, the Miami Herald, Newsweek, and others, we will find many articles

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on terror, but very little analysis of the jihadi ideology, penetration, and manipulation. The archives of CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS show the same trends. But more worrisome would be PBS, C-SPAN, and National Public Radio (NPR). Funded by U.S. taxpayers, these gigantic networks have dedicated less than 0.1 percent of content to what would become the main threat to the nation over the years. NPR would outdo every other medium: It actually aired more programs endorsing the apologists -- those who denied a jihadi threat -- than all other U.S. media combined. The pounding by NPR and the public networks over ten years further disguised the intensity of the Wahabi penetration.

But can we blame the media for the ideas it receives from the intelligentsia? Journalists are, after all, the product of classrooms and reading. They rely on advice, research, and guests. Although many news analysts are also generators of ideas, these ideas start somewhere. The "central school" of ideas provides basic definitions of ideologies and political conflicts and descriptions of events overseas. This "central factory" consists of the elite, whose job it is to think, research, and categorize the world as it evolves: in other words, academia. Did it fail too?

THE ACADEMIC FAILURE

Now we are entering the heart of the problem: the sacrosanct space of a nation's collective mind. It is here where fresh brains come for intellectual sustenance and where the future cadres of a society are shaped, prepared, and sent to the real world. It is a web I know all too well, having spent two-thirds of my adult life in it. Colleges and universities educate students who will end up in the media, receiving information and processing it, choosing when to use it and what to use from it. A graduate from a department of history who isn't taught the evolution of the jihadist movements or their ultimate goals will write articles describing al Qaeda as a rebel movement. If a university president in south Florida defines Hamas as a "cultural" group, if a professor in a classroom could ignore the concept of "infidel" or explain jihad as "a sort of yoga," how can we blame the journalists who can barely pronounce these Arabic names or that fighter pilot who on September 11 thought the Russians were attacking? How can an FBI agent spot a terrorist, if his teacher never mentioned the terrorists' ideology? How would it be possible for an analyst to understand the Salafis' views on dar el harb if his Middle East studies professor told him they were conservative reformers? How can a judge see the importance of a war fatwa if the apologist expert dismisses it as a legal opinion? How can juries decide if alleged terrorists are indeed conspiring against America if they have

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never been educated about takiya? I could write a book on these questions and impossible answers. But let us paint the bigger picture that tells about future jihads from past failures in academia.

Students are misinformed by their professors, who were misinformed by theirs -- who were funded by the Wahabis. This is the center of the equation. From there, it is mathematical deduction: Graduates fill the positions and continue to be dependent on the factory. If you poison the factory, you devastate the streams and blur the nation's vision. From academia you reach the media, government, foreign policy, and eventually the military.

America's failure to act is a result of a failure to educate Americans. The 9/11 Commission concluded that it was a failure of imagination. I disagree with the conclusion, if it stops there. Understandably, very few can review the result of academic smoke and mirrors if they are not on campus to see the subversion in action. How can anyone say that Americans are short on imagination? A nation that puts humans on the moon, invents the Internet, and captures the world's imagination with Hollywood is not short on imagination. It is education that failed Americans, failed Richard Clarke, and failed his government. And that is where I would look to see if we are ready to fend off the next jihad terror.

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bhkad said:

How The Media Failed America Before 9/11 and After

The Media had an excuse for failing to inform Americans of the nature, goals and threat of jihad prior to 9/11. Academia failed them. And I will deal with that in another post (or thread) at another time. But since 9/11 the Media has had a chance to learn their lessons and do their job of putting the events surrounding Islamic terrorism and the War on Terror in the proper perspective but they have failed to do so. Instead, largely, the Media has continued to stay in failure mode when it comes to informing the USA about Jihad. And in so doing the Media fails to do it's job to help try to perpetuate freedom in this world.

(Yes, their job is to help try to perpetuate freedom in the world. If not, a free press would eventually cease to exist.)

Despite the multitude of evidence and factual information that would easily dispel their misconceptions about Islamic terrorism and jihad, the media continues to misinform the public as a way of avoiding admission of their past failures and as a way of perpetuating their anti-Conservative personal (at least) agendas. That they would intentionally perpetuate a false reality can only be attributed to hubris.



There is a book ascribing the actions of the Bush Administration to what author and former CIA terrorist expert, Micheal Scheuer, calls, "Imperial Hubris" but I'm reminded of the following saying when thinking of Scheuer's chutzpah (nerve).

There is an Arabic proverb that says "she accused me of having her malady, then snuck away."

He and the media are the ones exhibiting hubris.

Scheuer doesn't know what he's talking about and his lack of knowledge acts as an inkblot test. He doesn't know the truth of the matter but he immediately seeks to cast blame on the president and the Administration for the attacks of 9/11. If he wanted to cast blame he would be correct in pointing the finger of blame at the Jihadists. At academia. At the media. But he blames Bush. Like I said, he has his nerve!

Here is what Scheuer says:



The quality that Scheuer refers to isn't really hubris. It's surety. And it is the same quality that all of the Conservatives here at DP have. Who of us here haven't been accused of being stubborn when debating liberals and misinformed loyal Americans in online forums? When liberals note the fact that we are unwilling to compromise our accurate assessments of Jihad and our support of the President and the War they really think it is because we are just being stubborn for the sake of stubbornness...as a test of will and allegiance...and that's it!

They think that we are being arbitrarily petty minded and obstinate and stubborn but they miss the point. What they can't understand is that we haven't been infected by the Wahabist agenda -- not in the textbooks, not in the universities, not in the media -- so we are able to see Jihad clearly and we understand Jihad in a different way than they do and we are not able to compromise on what we KNOW is the truth.

So what do the libs do in reply? They adopt an AFFECTATION of stubbornness as a way of pretending they are every bit as "correct" as we are. But it's more than just trying to be right on the topic of Jihad. And this is where their hubris shows itself. The liberals are trying to save their egos by beating the GOP but the GOP is trying to beat Jihad and save the world.

As I hinted at earlier, I've noticed that it's largely intellectuals and college grads who lead the opposition to the War, the War on Terror and the Bush Administration. Have you noticed that? And that it's the college grads and members of the intelligentsia who, largely, support fringe presidential candidates like Ron Paul, who cites Michael Scheuer as an expert even though he misunderstands the Jihadist goal and agenda.

END OF PART 1 OF 2

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bhkad said:

Despite the multitude of evidence and factual information that would easily dispel their misconceptions about Islamic terrorism and jihad, the media continues to misinform the public

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dragonslayer said:

I agree that the media failed to challenge strongly the BS put out by the Bush Government. They bought in the idea of idea promoted by the Bush people. Disagree and you are traitor. So we have been subjected to 8years of lies and propaganda.

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mpg said:

They weren't merely repeating what Bush said. They were parading Iraqi dissidents on TV who were insisting that Saddam had WMDs. You can say that Bush was repeating what the media was saying just as easily as you can say that the media was repeating what Bush was saying. Bush wasn't the only American politician saying those things anyway. Most of the Democrats and most of the Democratic leaders were saying the same thing. They were all just repeating what the Clinton administration said. Other countries were saying it too. IIRC, at least one of the major opponents of the invasion (France and/or Russia) said that Saddam had WMDs. To say that Bush convinced many other countries and millions of Americans that Saddam had WMDs is simply false.

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Thanks for pointing out that inconvenient fact. Add to it that Saddam himself propagated the idea he had WMDs. I'm still curious what was in all those convoys we let cross into Syria in the early days of the war. :doh

mpg said:

They weren't merely repeating what Bush said. They were parading Iraqi dissidents on TV who were insisting that Saddam had WMDs. You can say that Bush was repeating what the media was saying just as easily as you can say that the media was repeating what Bush was saying. Bush wasn't the only American politician saying those things anyway. Most of the Democrats and most of the Democratic leaders were saying the same thing. They were all just repeating what the Clinton administration said. Other countries were saying it too. IIRC, at least one of the major opponents of the invasion (France and/or Russia) said that Saddam had WMDs. To say that Bush convinced many other countries and millions of Americans that Saddam had WMDs is simply false.

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