Target: Al Jazeera
By Christopher
Brauchli
06 March, 2005
The Human Race &
Other Sports
"Making the
world safe for hypocrisy"
Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward Angel
It's
easy to get crosswise with the United States. Just ask Qatar. In 1988
it was Stinger missiles-today it's Al Jazeera.
Back in 1988 the
United States was on the same side as the Afghan rebels, as those opposing
the Russians were known. One of the ways that we helped the rebels (in
addition to training to Osama bin Laden and his band of followers) was
by selling them Stinger missiles. The rebels were delighted to own Stinger
missiles but, after the war, became somewhat sloppy as to their whereabouts.
As a result, some of the missiles that hadn't been used ended up in
Iran, a country with which then, as now, the United States did not enjoy
particularly cordial relations. That would have been a pretty bad outcome
but for two things. We were not at war with Iran and had not yet even
identified it as part of the axis of evil. Furthermore, according to
reports then circulating, the Iranians could not figure out how to make
the missiles work.
Disappointed but
not without resourcefulness, the Iranians sold them to Qatar.
A good question
at this point would be why would Qatar have wanted to buy Stinger missiles
that Iran couldn't make work from the Iranians. The answer is the United
States had sold 70 Stinger missiles to Bahrain a short while earlier.
Although the United States professed a dislike of selling weapons in
that part of the world, it made an exception in the case of Bahrain
(among other places) because it wanted Bahrain to be able to defend
itself from Iran on the off chance Iran would use the weapons it had
acquired from Oliver North of the Reagan administration or from the
Republic of China, against Bahrain. Qatar wanted the Stingers for self-defense
in case Bahrain forgot that it was to use the Stingers against Iran
and were to use them against Qatar instead.
One day someone
in the administration happened to be watching television and what to
that person's wondering eyes should appear but a Stinger missile in
a military parade in Qatar. Since the U.S. hadn't sold the Stinger to
Qatar its curiosity was piqued and it sent Richard Murphy of the State
Department to Qatar to learn more about it. Because Mr. Murphy represented
a very important country, he demanded of Crown Prince Hamad bin Khalifa
al-Thani, Qatar's defense minister, that the missiles be returned to
the U.S. Because the Crown Prince is a very important person in Qatar
he refused Murphy's request saying Qatar needed the missiles to defend
itself from Bahrain. (That dispute was ultimately resolved when Qatar
destroyed the missiles in 1990.) That was then, this is now. Once again
Qatar has something the U.S. wants it to get rid of. This time it's
Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera is an
Arab language television station headquartered in Qatar that broadcasts
throughout the Arab world and is heavily subsidized by the government.
The U.S. administration
does not like Al Jazeera because it shows pictures of things that the
U.S. would prefer not be shown on television. In addition, leading administration
figures such as the secretaries of state, defense have said that the
broadcasts are not only inflammatory but occasionally false. When they
say they are false they may be thinking that they are like the television
shows in this country that purport to be news shows but are actually
broadcasts paid for by the Bush administration in order to mislead the
American public on such things as its education and healthy marriage
initiatives.
Among the Al Jazeera
reports that the administration disliked were those that showed civilian
casualties while Falluja was under assault. Although there were lots
of civilian casualties the administration believes reports of the casualties
will make Arabs angry just like the falsified TV reports in the United
States make U.S. citizens angry. It fears that if the Arabs get mad
enough they'll do worse things to demonstrate their anger than the compliant
American public will.
The administration
does not want to give Arabs the impression that it opposes freedom of
speech even though it sometimes does. Nonetheless Al Jazeera's staff
is aware of the administration's displeasure. As its news editor, Ahmed
Sheikh, Al Jazeera's news editor explained:
"We understand
that Americans are not happy with our editorial policies. But if anyone
wants us to become their mouthpiece, we will not do that. We are independent
and impartial, and we have never gotten any pressure from the Qatari
government to change our editorial approach."
It's impossible
to know if he's telling the truth about not being pressured by the government.
It's not impossible
to tell whether the U.S. government has used broadcasters as mouth pieces.
It has.
Christopher Brauchli
is a lawyer in Boulder, Colorado. He can be reached at: [email protected]
or through his website:
http://humanraceandothersports.com