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Essay on The Effects Of Terrorism On Media In Pakistan
Western audiences have not been well informed by their media about terrorism and about the geopolitical role of the United States in Asia and Africa. The popular support for President Bush's 'War on Terrorism' that is shown in a number of public opinion polls in the United States and the similar (though somewhat more hesitant) support for it in Europe raises the issue of the relation between liberal democracy and warfare.
It seems that rational political debate in the public sphere has much less to do with the weighty decision to wage war than war propaganda and the manufacturing of public consent. The response of the United States and its allies to global terrorism has been an attack on Afghanistan and subsequently on Iraq. This in itself is a sign of a profound misunderstanding of the globalized network society in which we live.
What one will perceive as a 'success' in such a war will be subject to change in time and perspective. What will be the consequences of a war in Afghanistan for the entire Southern and Central Asian regions? It will have unintended consequences that may only surface in a decade, just as the unintended consequences of the first Gulf War surfaced only much later on 9/11. A crucial element will be the future stability of Pakistan, a nuclear power in perpetual contest with an increasingly Hindu nationalist India. The dangers of nuclear war in the region have already been shown in the first half of the year 2002.
It is increasingly clear that Pakistani media representations are crucial for both the form of warfare and the understanding of it. These representations belong to a global capitalist system of production, circulation, and consumption in which the North is dominant, but an understanding of it in terms of world system theory....
