Never fly the “A” model of anything.
—Edward Thompson
Day: February 27, 2005
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Quote of the Week, 27 FEB 05
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U.S. Arabic Channel to Expand to Europe
While much of Europe seems quite willing to ignore the growing danger to its future coming from Islamic radicals in its midst, the U.S. is already moving against the threat by confronting it over the airwaves.
The Bush administration is planning to expand the reach of its Arabic-language satellite channel, Alhurra, into Europe, an official overseeing the network said Sunday.
Alhurra, which means “the free one,” began beaming programming to the Middle East about a year ago.
Home to an estimated 15 million-20 million Muslims, many of Arab descent, Europe is a “significant location for Arabic-speaking people,” a U.S. official said.
Kenneth Tomlinson, chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the U.S. agency in charge of Alhurra, said Sunday that the channel’s goal is to “foster and support debate” and to give Arabic speakers the chance to hear the “Western side of arguments on women’s rights, economic opportunity and freedom and democracy.”
Officials said Alhurra is intended to provide competition to the Arabic-language channel Al-Jazeera, which they contend is biased against the United States.
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Tomlinson said U.S. officials hope to begin beaming Alhurra programming into Europe this fall.
Just before the channel’s launch last February, Bush said, “We are telling the people in the Middle East the truth about the values and the policies of the United States, and the truth always serves the cause of freedom.”
“As long as that region is a place of tyranny and despair and anger, it will produce men and movements that threaten the safety of Americans and our friends,” he added.
In the war against Islamist terror, the U.S. has two key advantages — it cannot lose any significant engagement on the battlefield and it cannot lose when ideas and ideologies are communicated and contrasted. Are these advantages enough to continue the fight or will they be undermined by defeatism and myopia, both at home and abroad? Ay, there’s the rub.
The article also notes that the $2 million cost for expanding Alhurra to Europe will come out of the pending $81 billion supplemental budget request for Iraq and Afghanistan, further demonstrating that Europe is indeed viewed as a theater in the war against Islamist terror.
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Saddam’s Half-Brother Captured
Another key member of the Saddam regime is now in Iraqi custody, and the news may be a brutal left-right combination to the midsection of the terrorists still in Iraq.
A half-brother of Saddam Hussein, who was one of his most reviled enforcers, has been arrested in Syria on suspicion of bankrolling anti-coalition insurgents, Iraqi officials said yesterday.
Sabawi Ibrahim Hasan, a strongman who once served as a head of Saddam’s feared security services, was held after nearly two years on the run. Syrian authorities captured him and handed him over to Iraq in an apparent goodwill gesture.
He was number 36 on the deck of 55 most-wanted Iraqis issued by United States troops after Saddam’s fall in April 2003. He also featured in the US list of the top 30 people sought for supporting the insurgency.
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The announcement was greeted with delight by many Iraqis, who, despite chafing under US occupation, recall Hasan as epitomising all the worst aspects of Saddam’s nepotistic rule.
Even in the former dictator’s Tikriti peasant clan, he was considered something of a black sheep – a short, overweight semi-literate whose sole qualification was his aggressive devotion to his leader.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was the dungeon master of Baghdad’s main public security HQ, where he is said to have presided over the torture and murder of many prisoners.
Why do I say this is a two-punch combination? Well, the first is obviously the blow felt by the loss of a key financier and a figure representing the old regime. The second is a little more subtle. With the handoff coming from Syria, it seems that Iraq’s neighbor may finally be feeling the pressure resulting from its support of the terrorists and holdouts opposing the new Iraqi government. That so much international focus is currently on Syria because of its involvement in Lebanon must also play a role.
Loss of Syrian support would be a huge hit to the terrorists, tolling the death knell for any insurgency not solely based on religious radicals and separating the insurgents from another chunk of the Iraqi populace.