23 Aug The “Credulous” Bin Laden Documentary
23.08.06
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If you go to the New York Times homepage today there is a large advertisement for the CNN documentary on Osama Bin Laden scheduled tonight at 9 p.m. EST. Should be interesting.
But the review of the documentary in the Times is less than flattering. My favorite line is “[w]ith the heavy rotation of soulful portraits of the soft-voiced prophet of jihad with Super 8-style movies of the warrior on horseback, parts of ‘In the Footsteps of bin Laden’ could almost double as a recruiting video for Al Qaeda.” The New York Times review describes the CNN documentary by Christiane Amanpour as “way too credulous” and “spending almost no time with critics in the Arab world who see bin Laden as a dangerous fanatic.”
Having watched the program last night I concur with the New York Times’ assessment. Amanpour lionized Bin Laden and presented him as a worthy enemy. The website gives you a flavor. It has features on “Bin Laden’s Allure”, “Bin Laden As I Know Him”, and “Escape From Tora Bora.” She put a premium on interviewing those individuals who have had personal contact with Bin Laden. And if her approach was to understand the person, why did she not interview the wider Bin Laden family, from whom he is estranged? Or others who have known him and rejected him? The presentation was particularly uneven in devoting all its time to events leading up to and immediately after September 11. Amanpour reserved literally five minutes of the two hour documentary for events since 2001. No discussion of how controversial he is among moderate Muslims. Little to no discussion of his distortion of traditional Islam. No discussion of how operationally insignificant he is today. She simply moved seamlessly from the escape at Tora Bora, to the inevitable next attack, to the ominous “thousands of bin Ladens” who are now inspired to follow in his footsteps. Amanpour genuinely appeared to have an agenda in… Read more »
I have long since given up on anything produced by CNN. And of course I’m distressed by the fact that many individuals will (or did) watch this documentary and no doubt come away thinking they’re a little better informed as a result. One would learn immeasurably more about bin Laden and al-Qaeda from reading the following books:
The Secret History of al-Qaida by Abdel Bari Atwan. Saqi.
Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror by Michael Scheuer. Potomac.
Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden ed. Bruce Lawrence trans. James Howarth. Verso.
Osama: The Making of a Terrorist by Jonathan Randal. Tauris.
And read Charles Glass’ extremely informative and insightful review essay of these titles, ‘Cyber-Jihad,’ in the London Review of Books, Vol. 28, No. 5 (9 March 2006). See: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n05/glas01_.html