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[ English Section ] [ Feedback ] Published in issue #445 on 30 October 2000*
This is Dan Rather, reporting for...ISI News?Editorial In another spectacle of degenerative American journalism, CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather made a mockery of the crisis in Afghanistan. The CBS special juxtaposed with Saturday's field report by Anthony Lloyd for the Times of London exemplifies the morally empty, insubstantial and gutless journalism that increasingly dominates US media. Rather, whose work is denounced by growing numbers of critics for politicization and liberalism, compiled a three-part report on Afghanistan, culminating in a heart-warming interview...with a Taliban bombardier. Instead of seeking to enlighten the American public about the Afghan tragedy, Rather chose to exploit the terrorist attack on the USS Cole and the subsequent terrorist scare, as Afghanistan once again popped up on American TV screens. The first part of Rather's "Inside Afghanistan" report dealt with the Taliban militia's refusal to extradite Osama bin Laden. That's what we can call hard news. Rather simply provided Taliban officials a forum to deflect criticism. According to the CBS report, the militia just can't give up Osama because "He is a real hero...If we hand him over right now, what would we answer to the people?" The people, Rather forgot to mention, are being tortured and killed by Osama's thugs. The people, inside Afghanistan, have suffered death and destruction from Osama's brigades and the Taliban war machine, which is partly funded by the Saudi terrorist's Al-Qaida organization. The people, Dan, have had their homes torched, crops burned, men murdered en masse, children mutilated, women taken into slavery, land confiscated and lives lost. It's a shame Gunga Dan couldn't make the trip inside Afghanistan to see what Osama's millions have brought: hell on earth. Rather once ended his broadcasts with one word,
"Courage." Show some Dan and go inside Afghanistan and
face the Taliban yourself. More importantly, face the very people
whom you insulted by glossing over the atrocities they've faced at
the hands of the militia and Osama. While Rather was busy putting on make-up and getting ready for the camera, the Time's Anthony Lloyd was employing a novel idea: reporting on Afghanistan by actually going inside Afghanistan. As CBS aired propaganda sound bites from a so-called Taliban "advisor," the Times told the epic tale of Ahmad Shah Masood and the Afghan's fight for freedom. Lloyd begins his report: NOBODY could be lost for words in introducing the slight figure sitting before me with his cap cocked jauntily to one side of his head. A figure of mythic status, he remains a hero to many in a region riven by betrayal and cruelty, notorious for corruption, torture, terrorism and heroin trafficking. Ahmed Shah Masood's record needs no embellishment. As a compere might put it: "He funds his war with emeralds from his valley homeland; commands a part-guerrilla army of often vying tribal chiefs; he has fought the Soviet Army, Afghan and Arab fundamentalists as well as Pakistani regulars. After 22 years of fighting, he is the world’s most experienced tactician. Were Sisyphus given a Kalashnikov in place of a rock, his task would be little different from this man’s: unique and alone, he is the legendary ‘Lion of Panjshir’." Lloyd is wrong; there is actually someone lost for words -- lost for true words to describe what's happening in Afghanistan. Perhaps it's ignorance, maybe moral insensibility or an ulterior motive, but something has led Rather and CBS to putting fiction before fact and furnishing the Taliban with a favorable spin by portraying them as "don't know better" vigilantes trying to do right, instead of the murderous monsters they really are. It is an election year and Rather's favorite, Al Gore, is nearing defeat. Some Afghan watchers say Rather's left leanings may have played a role in his pro-Taliban report, which sought to lessen the militia's damaged image with Americans, especially women. It was, after all, during the Clinton-Gore administration that first Hekmatyar and then the Taliban plagued Afghanistan. And the Clinton-Gore administration has failed to produce documents requested by the US Congress concerning Washington's role in the creation of the Taliban and support for the militia's Pakistani patrons. But one would hope that basic morality would disallow the barter of human blood -- Afghan, in this case -- with the results of a cyclic political election. In one segment, Rather did mention the plight of Afghan women, but even that story lent a propaganda platform for the Taliban. Most of the story revolved around quotes from a Taliban official and an American based Taliban supporter of Afghan descent -- a woman who lives with all the luxuries of upper class American life. Every word she spoke was spit in the eyes of Afghan women and girls inside Afghanistan. Every sentence spoken by this so-called Taliban "advisor" a dagger in the hearts of Afghanistan's women and girls who face daily persecution at the hands of the Taliban and Osama. And what does Rather say about the nightmare of Afghan women and girls inside Taliban-occupied areas? He simply calls it "severe discrimination." Severe discrimination is when a people are denied, say, the right to vote; Afghan women and girls, however, are denied their human rights -- indeed, their right to exist as humans. Yet Rather gives the right of speaking on behalf of all Afghan women to this Taliban "advisor" who cannot but sing the praises of the militia she so dearly loves but just can't go live under. But, Rather didn't stop there. Rubbing salt in the Afghan people's wound, Rather gave national airtime to a Taliban bombardier. On CBS evening television was seen a man who flies the Pakistani-supplied planes of the militia, which drop the Osama-bought bombs, which kill countless Afghan civilians nearly every day. This man, who even admitted to flying for the Soviet-installed communist government, was allowed to defend the atrocities of the Taliban. There would be hell to pay for Rather were he to afford the same opportunity to a Joseph Goebbels or Rudolph Hess. Unlike some, Afghans don't wield enough influence to strip Rather of his undeserved right to waste American airwaves with propaganda for a terrorist organization. But like all oppressed and embattled peoples of today and yesteryear, the Afghans bleed and die in droves. Rather calls the Taliban "Afghans" and their flying Afghan killers the "Afghan Air Force." He would do well to do a little research. The bombardier -- whose service under the communist flag was qualification enough for getting a job with the Taliban, which is rife with Afghan communist Khalqis -- is called a patriot by CBS. Rather tries to play down the bombardier's communist past, saying he "hated the communists so much that one day in 1989 he jumped into his fighter jet and defected, landing in Pakistan." The Soviets were defeated in 1989! The communist regime was doomed. Sure he defected in 1989, but only God knows how many Afghans and Afghan freedom fighters were martyred with that Russian fighter jet. Rather's atrocious attempt at a special report on Afghanistan could be forgiven if he were an inexperienced and naïve reporter. From all accounts, however, he's a seasoned journalist. Surely he knows the facts as spelled out by Lloyd:
But, Rather chooses to whitewash all Taliban flaws, from the militia's human rights abuses, to their ties with global terrorism and drug trafficking, and finally, to their incontrovertible fealty to Islamabad. The Taliban are not Afghan, and anyone who serves them is no patriot to Afghanistan. CBS and Rather are even out of step with American representatives in the US Congress who this week denounced the Taliban for turning Afghanistan into a haven for terrorists and drug production, and "infamous" violation of human rights. The American public should take note of Rather's goodwill to the Taliban and their good friend Osama, the man responsible for the death of many Americans. Masood, described by the Times story as having the "shining eyes of a prophet," is on the "edge of the delicate political games the West plays with Pakistan." These games now seem to encompass the news, as well. Thankfully, Lloyd writes, "watching General Masood wage war is akin to watching a chess master, given only two knights and a bishop, play a clumsy opponent..." Whether clobbering clumsy military opponents or countervailing clumsy journalists, Afghans are determined to overcome this crisis -- with Masood at the helm, they've done it before, and they can do it again. And on that day, Dan may again see his new friends, the Taliban bombardier and the militia "advisor," as he reports from the unemployment line, packed with Afghan "patriots" who lost their job when the Taliban went bust. *From this week's English-language page
of the hard-copy edition of
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