Extremists lose the perceptual war - longish, but interesting

THE suicide bombings in New York and Washington were, in media terms, Hollywood transplanted east. Like so many Hollywood fantasies they were also spectacular, successful, brave, audacious, mad and meticulous.

Yet, the real thing was a dreadful mistake. It was political ineptitude of the highest order. It constituted a miscalculation which has set back the philosophical forces of the anti-America industry for decades. If the US hadn't quite convinced the world it wears the white jerseys in times of conflict, then it wears white jerseys now. No one occupies higher moral ground than the innocent victims of calculated violence. For the terrorists, anger and desperation had an argument with pragmatism and good sense. The former prevailed, and it was the wrong result. Because this isn't a world in which events are necessarily shredded and combed through so as to yield up their every delicate nuance. This is a place in which things are regularly decided purely in terms of perception. And perception is an unforgiving phenomenon. Perceptions decree that scores of decent, well-meaning people are demonised and condemned every day. The blameless get blamed. This is a world in which the poor can get blamed for being impecunious. Good and bad, right and wrong, are dissembled via perception. Look vaguely preoccupied during a 40-second television "grab" and you're a cold fish. Smile too enthusiastically and you're not taking it seriously enough. It's all about perception, and the mirror for that perception is, of course, the media. That's why the media is so powerful. It has the capacity to craft perception. What we saw last week was terrorism acting as a lever to shift perception, like a hurriedly tilted reflection.

What, for example, was New York's World Trade Centre? An extravagant, opulent monument to uncaring global greed? A swaggering, unnecessary reminder to everyone who has very little of everything they don't have? Not now, it isn't. It's a shrine. It's a fulcrum for good and evil. It is/was good; what happened to it was evil. Are you seeing, hearing and reading too much now about the "Dubbya" aspect of an inept US president, one George Walker Bush? Are commentators still distracted by how Bush can't construct his sentences, how he doesn't always pronounce words properly? Is he still a fumbling ingenue, fortunate to have seen off Al Gore, lucky to be there? You're aware of the reality. Bush is now a strong, compassionate, sensible, statesmanlike – if righteously angry – leader. He's tireless, morale-enhancing, morally muscular. He's a good bloke.

What about the Afghanistan-based Saudi billionaire, Osama bin Laden? A thoughtful, articulate rallying point for the pure essence of incorruptible Islam? A brave, misunderstood, brutally defamed symbol from which the deprived and desperate can draw much-needed and legitimate solace? You'd know perfectly well by now that bin Laden is a ruthless thug whose bloody death would be a blessing upon civilisation. He's a nasty piece of work. He's a coward, a sinister killer, a man with all the moral credentials of Hitler or Stalin.

You can, of course, go on to extend "The New Perception" to great slabs of the universe. The US is not a bullying world superpower/policeman who liberates or oppresses at whim. It's an admirable, honourable victim of malevolent wickedness. Palestine, Iraq and other Muslim states aren't oppressed, poverty riddled, culturally deprived places deserving sympathy, compassion and assistance. They are the purveyors of vicious murder and terror and deserving recipients of loathing and disgust. They are bad places, full of bad people. The savage mindset of The Crusades is re-energised.

Some, or all, of these new perceptions are obviously flawed. But popular perception is a powerful thing and that's why the New York/Washington bombings were as stupid as they were evil. Three out of four kamikaze jets hit the target. Yet the reality is that all four were massively misdirected. Because the screech of the wounded victim no longer falls on deaf global ears. And no one has a louder screech than the US. Its all-embracing media, not least CNN, its wealth and international influence ensures the US can attract and hold attention as can nowhere else.

Remember the Oklahoma bombing? Two years ago an estimated 40,000 Turks were killed in massive earthquakes. Do you recall the Turkish disaster attracting the media attention we've seen focus on the US over the past few days?

The US is, of course, poised to juggle with the perception of itself. And it must, in common with everyone who balances on the high moral ground, be watchful. American bombs hurt, too. A way to slip from the tall terrain would be to condemn indiscriminate slaughter, then go out there and slaughter. It may be a cliche, but two wrongs don't compute to a right.

There are hopeful signs that those who want this affair to retain its Hollywood facsimile, with the cavalry providing suitable revenge just before the credits roll down, may have to wait. Bush and his Secretary of State, Colin Powell, stress a need for patience. This has been commendably wise because New York isn't Belfast, London, Coventry, Liverpool, Hamburg, Berlin, Bonn, Baghdad, Warsaw, Tetovo, Split, Skopje, Hiroshima or Kabul. Pearl Harbour and Oklahoma aside, Americans aren't used to assaults on American soil. So they may, understandably, lack some of the resigned stoicism necessary to regard such happenings as part of the natural order of things. Given Hollywood's infiltration of the US psyche, patience is a virtue Bush may have to all but plead for.

Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbour was successful. Yet, in retrospect, the price extracted decrees it a Japanese disaster. The greatest price for last week's terrorism has already been extracted: loss of sympathy and philosophical identification with a variety of causes, many of which probably possessed semblances of justification. They're causes not now worth a perceptual cent. Views, within seconds of a few centimetres of freak footage, were drastically re-aligned. The bombings were bad and mad. But, above all, they were moronic.

Palestine, Iraq and other Muslim states aren't oppressed, poverty riddled, culturally deprived places deserving sympathy, compassion and assistance. They are the purveyors of vicious murder and terror and deserving recipients of loathing and disgust.

How about " Palestine, Iraq and other Muslim states are oppressed, poverty riddled, culturally deprived purveyors of vicious murder and terror. Their governments, teachers, clerics and "moral leaders" are deserving recipients of loathing and disgust. "

Yes, it's beginning to be disgusting when wealty privileged Muslim students bring up their countries' poverty as some kind of excuse for what they are doing. They need to start realizing that the cause of poverty is almost always cultural, it's time for them to open their eyes.

wealthy privileged Muslim students Might just want to ask themselves just why their countries are so poor. But then they might not like the answer.
Economic wealth=economic freedom=political freedom. One follows the other like day follows night.

Yes, the wealthy students have good reason to preserve their corrupt culture back home. That poverty it creates ensures them their privileged status and gives them a hungry power base to use for their own demonical purposes.

I wonder if this guy has any idea how many we lose in tornado season every year? What kind of person can't discern why a savage act of man is more shocking than a random natural catastrophe? The earthquake that kills a thousand has no evil intent; the man who kills a dozen is more frightening.

corrupt culture back home

Gee do you suppose that this just might have something to do with their poverty?

Yup! I always try to keep a firm grasp of the obvious.

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