Why America should be watching Al Jazeera but plainly isn't

In an indication of what the Bush administration thinks of Al Jazeera journalism (and habeas corpus), it has locked up one of the network’s cameramen, Sami al-Hajj, in Guantánamo Bay for more than five years without charging him.

Says Roger Cohen writing in the New York Times.

And yet at the US miltitary base in Kabul,the soldiers are permenantly tuned to the channel


Cohen goes onto say that

The choice of viewing at the NATO gym is a lot wiser than Rumsfeld’s choice of words or the terrible treatment of Hajj. America, and not just its front-line soldiers, needs to watch Al Jazeera to understand how the world has changed. Any other course amounts to self-destructive blindness.

Why,well

1.It must be grasped is America’s diminished ability to influence people.

2.to be able to see the erosion of American power.

3.to view the the solidification of anti-Americanism as a political idea.