Been there for a decade.
Bruce http://www.suntimes.com/news/huntley/309738,CST-EDT-HUNT23.article Don't look now, but jihad propaganda is getting on the Internet March 23, 2007 BY STEVE HUNTLEY Beyond the daily newspaper accounts and TV images of the four-year-old war in Iraq, Islamist radicals are waging a propaganda war against the West on the Internet. Like American politicians, the jihadists have discovered the power of the Internet to connect directly with an audience. As you might expect in this kind of "hearts and minds" offensive, the Islamists come across as confident of victory over the United States and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Our beloved Islamic nation, know that the infidels have begun to retreat and to flee, while Islam is on the rise," declares a spokesman for the Islamic State of Iraq in a March 11 Web site posting titled "The Failure of the Al-Maliki-Bush Plan." (This translation comes from the Middle East Media Research Institute, which monitors Mideast media and is a valuable resource on the content of Arab and Muslim newspapers, magazines, television and Web sites.) The ISI spokesman goes on to declare the Muslim world is seeing "the defeat of the Crusaders and apostates." Final victory, he says, will be achieved only "by rolling skulls, spilling blood and continuing" the jihad. A March 21 posting by a "Taliban military commander" predicts, "Next spring we will bring shameful defeat upon the Jews and the Christians" in Afghanistan. "The Taliban is no longer weak, as it was in the past," he asserts, saying the radical Islamists control whole regions of the country. "The people cannot turn to the government, because the Taliban prevents this. This is real proof of the victory and success of the Taliban movement." Web sites recently have posted videos showing a suicide bombing preparation and attack, the murder of captured Iraqi government employees and what are described as attacks on U.S. forces. What's more, the Islamist radicals want to carry this propaganda offensive directly to Americans through the computers in their homes. A March 20 posting called on the "Mujahideen" to use Internet forums and chat rooms to spread anti-war sentiment among Americans. "Raiding American forums is among the most important means of obtaining victory in the fierce media war . . . and of influencing the views of the weak-minded American who pays his taxes so they will go to the infidel American army," this posting says. "This American is an idiot and does not [even] know where Iraq is . . . '' This Web site urges its mouse-clicking jihadists to use "purely American" names, "invent stories about American soldiers" who "were drafted to Iraq and then committed suicide" and express sympathy for the family of soldiers seriously injured in the war. "Your concern should be introducing topics which . . . will cause [them to feel] frustration and anger towards their government." No one is suggesting that the extremist Islamist Internet offensive has had any significant impact on American attitudes toward the war. In this country, a free press rightly presents an unvarnished picture of the war, and the facts on the ground in Iraq have turned a majority of Americans against it. Still, we should not dismiss this campaign as irrelevant. The jihadists know the West's struggle against Islamist terrorism is a battle for more than Iraq or Afghanistan. For them it's a long-term campaign to recruit the wider moderate Islamic world to their view of an imperialist, colonialist West waging war on Islam. The jihadist campaign is being pressed not just on the Internet, but through television networks like al-Jazeera and other Arabic outlets as well as newspapers and magazines in the Middle East. American officials are aware of the radicals' propaganda initiative. An Islamist forum last month complained about a "Zionist-Crusader campaign" by American intelligence to eliminate Web sites distributing their postings and films. Unfortunately, we appear to have taken a big step backward on the TV front. The American government in 2004 established the television network Al-Hurra to beam news about democracy and a balanced view about what's going on in the Middle East to the Arab world. But journalist Joel Mowbray, writing in the Wall Street Journal on March 12, reported that a change in management at Al-Hurra now has it broadcasting speeches by leaders of the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah, an interview with an alleged al-Qaida type happy about 9/11 and coverage demonizing Israel. American taxpayers should not be paying to create another forum for terrorists and their mouthpieces. However you may feel about the war on terror, much of the world, and especially the Muslim world, thinks we are losing. Maybe President Bush's surge strategy can achieve success in enabling the foundation of a moderate representative government in Baghdad. But the Muslim moderates to whom we want to appeal won't know that if we lose the information battle. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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