Global Policy Forum

By Rami G. Khouri*

Nearly four years since the United States declared war on terror, I would humbly like to declare a little war in return. My war is on the quality of news and analysis on terrorism that the American public receives through its mainstream mass media. In my 35 years of professional engagement with the American, European and Arab mass media, never have I encountered the strange and dangerous phenomenon of the "terrorism expert" that is proliferating through the American media. It is time to knock these phonies off their horses and run the rascals out of town.

I declare war on mainstream American television's "terrorism experts" because most of them are incompetent, and in fact they compound the terror threat rather than help to understand or resolve it. They are symptomatic of a deeper political and cultural problem that has been evident since immediately after 9/11, and that echoes throughout all the policies of the Bush administration. Faced with the terrible and murderous challenge of terrorism's global criminal threat, the Bush administration and American political culture as a whole have opted to respond with that peculiarly American combination of foreign policy-making principles: bravado, entertainment, kicking ass, feel-good sentimentality, flag-waving patriotism and 'aw-shucks' amazement at the consistent capacity of foreigners—especially in the Arab and Islamic world—to behave according to the atavistic violence that defines them and their politics, history, religion and culture.

This is not a blanket condemnation of all terrorism analysts on American television and radio; there are indeed some very good reports in the American mass media, and some very impressive, legitimate American experts, scholars and analysts who know the world and America's place in it, and the critical relationship between the two. The CNN Presents report last week on the Iraq-related intelligence failures in Washington is a timely example of all that is good about American journalism, especially its capacity and will to probe an issue in depth. Yet this same probing, wide-angle, nuanced and analytical style of reporting is not applied, for some reason, to a full examination of terrorism against the U.S. or other targets. The preferred option for reporting the American war on terror is Bugs Bunny-style journalism, in which good guys brave every danger to defeat the bad guys who are culturally inclined to violence.

For reasons that we must try to understand, the mainstream American media mostly offers a deadly combination of two recurring themes: First is the Bush administration's increasingly less credible mantras about needing to stay the course and fight the terrorists 'over there' before they attack Kansas City, Omaha and Laredo with atomic bombs; and, second is the mishmash of speculation and imagination that masquerades as fact and serious analysis from so-called "terrorism experts". There are several things seriously wrong with most of the "terrorism experts" whom I have seen and heard on American television and radio. Their main weakness is that they operate in the realm of the speculative rather than the factual. The bulk of their analyses are total guesswork, and usually wrong; yet even that is flawed because—and this is weakness number 2—their guesswork is ideologically defined by the prevalent White House script of the day.

Weakness number 3 is that, as far as I can tell, the vast majority of these experts have little direct knowledge of the Arab-Asian societies they are analyzing. One giveaway of that problem is that they routinely mispronounce most of the names of people, places and organizations of which they are supposed to be experts. Major problem number 4 is that the experts tend to focus their speculation on the symptoms of terror rather than its underlying causes. Most of them seem ignorant of—or at least do not talk about—the full range of issues that propel young men and women into the grisly business of terror, and that drive political tensions and anger in many Arab-Asian societies.

Problem number 5 is that they emphasize military analyses of a problem that is predominantly political. Most of these "experts" are retired military officers, former FBI agents, ex-special forces toughies, or very marketing-savvy journalists or researchers. Their main qualifications seem to be their impressive square jaws, or ability to qualify every sentence they speak with "it seems," "we suspect," or "it is likely that?"—thereby anchoring their analyses in a ton of speculation and guesswork that sometimes verges on fantasy. Statements of proven fact or verifiable intent seem alien to their universe, which is an insult to the best traditions of American journalism that respect both factuality and one's audience.

The terrorism experts' inability or unwillingness to probe the full range of issues that lead to terror leaves them at best as rather pathetic entertainers. At worst, they contribute to the deadly cycle of ignorance, intellectual superficiality, disdain for facts, and simplistic one-dimensionalism that defines much of the public communication between Americans and Middle Easterners. This increasingly promotes the anger, hatred, revenge, racism and violence that engulf more and more bewildered Americans, Arabs and Asians. Most of these "terrorism experts" are no such thing, and their dangerous charade should be brought to a merciful end. They represent a strange new school of intellectual buffoonery and sociopolitical amusement, in a mainstream American communications and political culture where the prized criteria for success are kicking ass, making the public feel good, and defining the terror problem as the criminal manifestation of aberrant Arab, Asian and Islamic cultures. I have yet to hear an American "terrorism expert" who dares to suggest that terror at its primary level is the predictable consequence of a tragic cycle of modern history whose principal culprits include the terrorists and their societies, as well as foreign actors like the United States, Israel, the former European colonial powers, the Soviet Union and a few other rascals here and there.

Why is it that terror is predominantly explained to Americans as cultural and psychological, while every other problem and threat in society—racism, poverty, crime, poor health, gender discrimination, political violence, endangered turtles and a hundred others—are correctly analyzed in their full context of dynamic history and fallible humanity?

About the Author: Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.