Al-Jazeera

Remember the US bombing of al-Jazeera's offices? The number of journalists killed in Iraq (more than the entire Vietnam War [or "The American War," as Vietnamese say])? Here, Marc Lynch in Wilson Quarterly discusses the nature of al-Jazeera and the role it plays in democratic reconstruction. Some of this has been known to some of the American public since prior to the war. I think the case of al-Jazeera serves to underline the fact I've discussed before: it's not democracy the US is after, but neoliberalism.

But these incendiary segments tell only half the story. Al-Jazeera is at the forefront of a revolution in Arab political culture, one whose effects have barely begun to be appreciated. Even as the station complicates the postwar reconstruction of Iraq and offers a platform for anti-American voices, it is providing an unprecedented forum for debate in the Arab world that is eviscerating the legitimacy of the Arab status quo and helping to build a radically new pluralist political culture....