Editorial Commentary

Cartoon furor exposes deeper meaning of war on terrorism

Posted 2/9/2006 7:41 PM

From http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnist/raasch/2006-02-09-raasch_x.htm

Author: Chuck Raasch

WASHINGTON (Gannett) -- If you were the editor of a major American news outlet, would you show the Danish newspaper cartoon of a bomb-turbaned Prophet Muhammad that has incited violent and sometimes deadly protests from Muslims around the world?

What about a cartoon transposing Israel's Star of David over the Nazi flag, which appeared in an Egyptian newspaper in November? Would you print the Holocaust denial cartoons now being solicited by the bellicose Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has declared the Nazi's killings of millions of Jews a "myth" and has threatened to wipe Israel off the face of the earth?

By some interpretations, any depiction of Muhammad is an egregious violation of Islamic teachings. The bomb in the Danish cartoon made it worse, inciting death threats against journalists who reprinted it and setting off demonstrations against Danish and other Western interests around the globe.

While some moderate Arab leaders like Jordan's King Abdullah condemned the violence and suggested more civil forms of protest, the violent reactions shouldn't surprise anyone who understands the broader context of how fundamentalists wage war in the battlefields of thought.

The cartoon highlights a new reality in newsrooms around the globe. In an age in which everything eventually ends up on the Internet -- including this particular cartoon -- a news company's decision to show or not show an offending image says as much about the global war over information as it is does about freedom of the press. And more and more, the lives of journalists are threatened in the process.

As the Anti-Defamation League and others have pointed out, government-controlled media in Islamic countries often show extremely harsh and dehumanizing images of Israel, Jews and the United States. So this latest flare-up isn't so much about taking offense as it is about which particular ideology was offended.

The Jordanian king's counsel for restrained protest aside, this cartoon was turned into a proxy for Islamic fundamentalist grievances against the rest of the world, and the offended responded to pen and paper with violence and death threats.

The reaction also exposed gross misunderstandings of how an independent press operates in free societies. The governments of some Muslim countries demanded that Western countries force news organizations that ran the cartoon to apologize. If there comes a day when the American government can force USA TODAY or your local news outlet to apologize for anything, this country will have lost the war.

As an increasing number of commentators have pointed out, calling this a war against terrorism is tantamount to declaring war against the Nazi blitzkrieg of 1939. Fundamentally, this is a struggle over freedom of thought, and the media -- broadly defined -- are a front.

In the January issue of the Hoover Institution's Policy Review, veteran American diplomat Tony Corn writes that we are in the midst of a "netwar" in which "media networks are at once actors and vectors, platforms and weapons systems, front lines and theaters of operations."

Corn, who was a political analyst in several American embassies, declares that "the West is at war with a new totalitarianism for which terrorism is one technique among many."

A few American newspapers and television networks have shown the offending Danish cartoon or posted online links to it. But most news outlets have not, despite hearing from viewers and readers who want them to as an expression of First Amendment kinship.

The reasoned position would be to offer the Web links, which gives readers the power to decide what to do. If you're offended by images of Muhammad, don't go there. If you might be offended but you believe that being a free citizen requires you to be fully informed, you'd have the option to click. If you're not offended by images of Muhammad and believe freedom carries a special responsibility to not censor images that might offend a dominant ideology or religion, you could go there simply to exercise that belief.

Free will is the point. As this is written, American journalist Jill Carroll is being held and terrorized against her will by masked men in Iraq who have threatened to kill her -- a woman who was simply trying to give voice to others' struggles. That's not a cartoon.

Rebuttal

This article is about the recent cartoon depiction of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper that caused a ridiculous hoopla throughout the world. At the end of the article the author states that the "reasoned" approach would be to offer links to the offensive cartoons but to not actually publish them. I disagree with this conjecture and think that it is an affront to the principles of the first amendment.

While I understand the sensitive nature of the cartoon in question, it is a news outlet's duty to inform the public of current affairs and not to censor itself, and I think that any organization shying away from publishing the cartoons is failing in this regard. Similarly it is the responsibility of civilized human beings to allow others the freedom to express their opinions (however unpopular) without fear of violent retaliation. There are plenty of non-violent methods of expressing discontent such as peaceful protests and boycotts. In my opinion, no thought or idea will ever warrant a violent response. I believe that anyone responding to this cartoon with violence is absolutely the aggressor, and should be dealt with like the criminal they are.

GOP split is only splitting hairs

March 19, 2006

From http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-chait19mar19,1,1479794.column?coll=la-util-op-ed&ctrack=1&cset=true

Author: Jonathan Chait

NEWSPAPERS AND magazines have been filled with talk of a conservative foreign policy schism. The Republican Party comes off sounding a lot like ... well, Iraq: its charismatic leader deposed, long-suppressed feuds have bubbled up into a bloody and seemingly intractable feud.

I don't think that's quite right. The