[Update at the end]
Another terror plot with a goal of mass murder has been stymied in Britain. Apparently, a group of anywhere from 21 to 50 men, depending on the reports you read, has been implicated in a plot to destroy up to 20 airplanes en route from London to the United States. As has become commonplace in such news reports, the MSM, out of some sense of decorum, or multiculturalist sensitivity, or perhaps some misguided fantasy that they are helping to calm the public, tries to disguise the perpetrators. According to the BBC:
'Airlines terror plot' disrupted
A plot to blow up planes in flight from the UK to the US and commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale" has been disrupted, Scotland Yard has said.It is thought the plan was to detonate explosive devices smuggled in hand luggage on to as many as 10 aircraft.
Police are searching premises with 21 people in custody after arrests in London, High Wycombe and Birmingham.
The report does not further characterize the 21 people in custody. Deep in the body of the article is this:
Police had spoken to a "good number of community leaders to make them aware that a major operation was under way," he added.
And this:
According to BBC sources the "principal characters" suspected of being involved in the plot were British-born. There are also understood to be links to Pakistan.
The New York Times is minimally more forthcoming, mentioning in the third paragraph:
The police did not identify the suspects or their origin, though Paul Stephenson, the deputy metropolitan police commissioner for London, said "community leaders" had been alerted about the police action, using a code word for the British Muslim community.
Later in the article, the Times adds this cryptic bit of information:
News of the foiled plot comes little more than a year after terrorists killed 52 people in an attack on the London Underground, and nearly five years after the attacks of Sept. 11.
Michelle Malkin, perhaps unnecessarily, points out the particular vapidity of the press:
One word that you'll note that is missing from first coverage--well here, see for yourselves:
Sky News' Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt said those arrested were mainly young, British-born Asian men.
The missing word is "Muslim." Young, Muslim men from Pakistan. Bloomberg News mentions the word in its report, not to describe the suspects, but only in a stupid bit of editorializing:
Britain has 12,500 troops deployed in military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, a source of anger among some of Britain's Muslim population.
For crying out loud. No wonder Melanie Phillips calls it Lemmingland.
I am regularly taken to task for painting the Muslim world with a broad brush. I think that is usually a mis-reading of my point of view, but it typically occurs in reaction to posts suggesting we need to be clear about who the enemy is that we are fighting, as well as the need for the Muslim world to decide if they are fighting terror and Jihad or just trying to direct it toward others (Jews and Americans, foremost among the "others"). The MSM, in their fairly lame attempts to avoid identifying terror with Islam, has done themselves and Islam a terrible disservice. By avoiding the word altogether, it becomes obvious to any reader that the word Islam in connection with terror is becoming tautological. The two words are intimately connected by the news because Islam is so "conspicuous by its absence."
At a dinner party, if the host serves up something inedible, it is a social nicety to avoid mentioning it, perhaps nibble a bit at the food, politely leave early, and stop at a diner on the way home. None of that renders the food edible or leaves anyone in doubt about the source of their post-prandial hunger.
In the same way, not mentioning Islam in connection with such acts of terror primarily serves to bring attention to its absence. Furthermore, it prevents the MSM from using the opportunity to explore the differences between the Islam practiced by so many peace loving and tolerant Muslims and the intolerant, hateful brand of Islam promulgated by the Jihadists. The result is the exact opposite of what the MSM consciously intend.
Maxed Out Mama captures the result of such short sighted attempts to manage the perceptions of the audience. In her post yesterday about the meaning of Joe Lieberman's defeat in the Connecticut democratic primary, The Ice Floe Has Broken, she includes this:
There is very, very strong anti-war sentiment in the country. Turnout was high, and Lieberman apparently lost big in some of the small towns. His loss was a genuine loss of the Democratic base, not a loss produced by a low turnout of the Democratic base and a high turnout of anti-war groupies.
This anti-war sentiment is by no means confined to CT. I was listening to Hannity the other night, and a Republican from Texas called up saying he wasn't going to vote in the mid-terms. The issue for him was Iraq, and he finally broke down crying about our soldiers getting killed and wounded over there. Sentiment in the entire US has hardened against all Muslim countries. The truth is, that guy from Texas would probably support carpet-bombing Iran, but will never support American troops being deployed to defend Muslim countries again. Much of the US is possessed by a growing belief that Islam is sick at its core and that no good can come from it, and that the only way to deal with them is by crushing victories in conventional wars. The feeling is that if they want to fight, we will fight and win, but no more half measures. Bush has completely lost his battle to keep this a non-religious war, while many Democrats are refusing to admit that the Islamicists have even launched a war on democracy and the west.
The emphasis is mine and the point is that most Americans are not "news junkies"; they do not spend untold hours reading about the differences between Sunni and Shia Islam, or between what the Jihadists want and what secular Muslims want; or what Sharia law means in the various parts of the world where it is practiced. All they see is headlines, perhaps a little TV news, and even the most out of touch have gotten the message that Islam and terror are indivisible.
We can thank our MSM for their part in this; by neglecting the job of actually reporting on events in favor of trying to shape them, they have facilitated, via their meta-communication that Islam is so deadly and dangerous that, like Voldemort in the Harry Potter books, its very name must not be mentioned, the belief that Islam is a deadly and dangerous religion.
[It is worth noting that this is consonant with the overt goals of the "military wings" of the terror groups and the covert goals of the "political and social" wings of the terrorists and their enablers.]
What so many have missed, in their demonization of George Bush, is that our invasion of Iraq was designed, in part, to preclude the war against Islamic terror becoming the religious war that the Islamists of all stripes wanted it to be. As of now, the entire enterprise, of which Iraq, Israel/Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, London, etc, are all different fronts, hangs on a knife edge, and is likely to remain there for a long time to come.
Update: Richard Landes has done a brilliant job exploring the myopia of the MSM. His post is long but it should be read and book marked for future reference. A small excerpt from Meditations on Reutersgate: What’s Going on in the MSM?:
Despite the understandable desire to write the avalanche of criticism from the blogosphere off as so much right-wing denial of reality, is it not possilbe that in this new and dangerous 21st century, sometimes opposition is true friendship? Isn’t the definition of a fool, someone who can’t tell his friends from his enemies?
The media are the eyes and ears of civil society. Without clear and accurate information, we are sailing blind on the perilous white water of globalization in the early 21st century.
The media’s commitment to impartiality and critical distance should make the news a form of dialysis system that should filter out the poison. What can we do if you insist on pumping the system full of poisons?
It is never too early to wake up in conditions of looming crisis… and it can be too late.
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