Friday, August 24, 2007
I haven't watched CNN and Christiane Amanpour's series. The content sounds fairly predictable, and if I really missed anything I'm sure the replay will be available somewhere. From the sounds of it, I've made the right life choice. When they do a fourth episode on the religion (non-conventional) whose adherents murdered the most people in the 20 Century -- the Communists and members of various other far-Left movements -- I'll consider watching that one. CAMERA has a review here: God's Jewish Warriors — CNN's Abomination
Disproportionate reliance on partisan voices, some extreme figures, skews the message dramatically. Jimmy Carter and John Mearsheimer, chief proponents of the discredited canards about Jews subverting American national interests to those of Israel, are repeatedly and respectfully interviewed. Carter, for example, claims that no American politician could survive politically while calling for settlement-related aid cuts to Israel: "There's no way that a member of Congress would ever vote for that and hope to be re-elected."...
Good grief, what are they going to do next, exhume Charles Percy?
Doh!
Update: Seraphic Secret has been live-blogging: Watching Al Jazeera, Part I, Watching Al Jazeera, Part II and Watching Al Jazeera, Part III.
I find it ironic that Jimmy Carter is deferred to as a cool-headed voice in a programme about religious fanaticism.
Here's Hitchens on same:
"Here is a man who, in his latest book on the Israel-Palestine crisis, has found the elusive key to the problem. The mistake of Israel, he tells us (and tells us that he told the Israeli leadership) is to have moved away from God and the prophets and toward secularism. If you ever feel like a good laugh, just tell yourself that things would improve if only the Israeli government would be more Orthodox. Jimmy Carter will then turn his vacantly pious glare on you, as if to say that you just don't understand what it is to have a personal savior."
http://www.slate.com/id/2166661/nav/tap2/
In the comments someone makes a reference to a good source about Qutb:
The Philosopher of Islamic Terror, by Paul Berman
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F01E7D91731F930A15750C0A9659C8B63&sec=health&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Another excellent deconstruction of this Muslim Spiritual leader is Martin Amis, The Age of Horrorism
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1868732,00.html
I only watched the second installment on the Muslim warriors. My impression was that Amanpour was much ill-at-ease, manifesting an attitude reminiscent of a battered wife trying to ingratiate herself feebly to an abusive husband. She was simpering, wagging her finger coyly at one interviewee for declaring that women were not equal to men (or something to that effect). I can't help comparing this to her programme on Iran, some 8 years ago, when she showed how dissident voices were being silenced, women forced to cover up, etc. Oriana Fallaci considered her a special friend, a kindred spirit of sorts. Whatever happened to the intrepid Christiane Amanpour, who defied President Clinton on live television to do something about Bosnia? She seems to have lost her journalistic ethics, her ability to observe clearly and present a credible picture of the dark forces at work in the world today. It might have something to do with the fact that she has been living in London these last few years and coming under the influence of the knee-jerk anti-Israel and anti-American chattering "congnoscenti" over there.
I wonder what Hitchens has to say about this trilogy.
That's an astute observation. I've been thinking about it since I saw your post.
Why, indeed, wasn't Carter himself profiled as one of "G*d's Warriors"? He should have been, along with Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, and other powerful Christians (what about Pat Buchanan? The Bushes?).
Gee. I wonder why they weren't?