Zabihullah, a Taliban operative, once explained to Newsweek how certain American actions led the agenda in Taliban meetings with existing members and potential recruits. “We talk about how America tortures with waterboarding, about the cruel confinement of Muslims in wire cages in Guantánamo, about the killing of innocent women and children in air attacks – and now America gives us another gift with its street protests to prevent a mosque from being built in New York,” Zabihullah says. “Showing reality always makes the best propaganda.”

 

For decades, the United States has allowed terrorist organizations to frame America for the Muslim world.  They have done a masterful job of making sure their audience knows all about the evil that is America:  the brutal, wealthy bully that uses power, might and military strength to repress and oppress Muslims around the world.  Naturally, the terrorists are the good guys, who fight bravely and unselfishly to protect Islam and Muslims on a global scale.   

 

These groups will often base a story on half-truths or outright lies, then fill in the blanks with America's actual failures like the catastrophes of U.S. torture, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib.  Conspiracy theories like The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion (a fraudulent document that served as a pretext and rationale for anti-Semitism in the early 20th century) and the 9/11 Truth movement (a conspiracy theory that disputes the conventional wisdom of the 9/11 accounts, specifically the part where al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four airliners and crashed them into the Pentagon and Twin Towers) are exploited mightily.

 

Terrorist groups have achieved great success with their America is Evil narrative primarily through Information Warfare, or "using truth, intelligence, propaganda, psychological warfare, and media in a unified effort to control the way an enemy's own ideology or policies are perceived by the global public."  In the past, terrorists have waged their extremist propaganda war by using everything from CDs to television to radio. Now they have the enormous benefit of the Internet, which gives them the opportunity to reach into unlimited parts of the world.  Enough is enough. 

 

We must – in real time – reframe this highly damaging, globally destructive narrative.  We can start by not giving them more ammunition to help create it.   

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Evidence:

​

Sami Yousafzai.  “Taliban Using Mosque Controversy to Recruit."  Newsweek. 30 Aug 2010

 

 

​

 

​

​