In his 1964 book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshal McLuhan stated: 'The medium is the message'. Considering the present day context of the role the western media (BBC, CNN, ABC News, NBC, CBS, FOX News, Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, The Economist etc.) is playing, this statement can be re-written as 'The medium is power'. The message that is manufactured by the western media has become a product of the power discourse of western hegemony. Edward Said excellently spoke about this in his book Covering Islam (1981), exploring the coverage of Islam in western media as a fundamentalist religion provoking terror, anti-American and anti-democratic sentiments around the world. Such use of the media should be called its abuse. A very recent example of media abuse is the video game Consul 3 made by Sony Computers Entertainment America Incorporated representing Bangladesh-- along with Morocco and Poland-- as a terrorist state. The use of media in representing Islam and Muslims discursively, seeking support for Bush's 'war on terror', fashioning out diplomatically maneuvered euphemistic terminologies like 'Operation Enduring Freedom' by suppressing their original meanings to validate Bush's imperial aggression into Iraq and Afghanistan speaks volumes about how the media is abused by the Americanized western media empire. Islam appears in the media as almost synonymous with terrorism/evil. Hence, the abusive use of such terms like 'Radical Islam', 'Islamist extremism',' Islamist fundamentalism', 'Islamist anti-democracy', 'Militant Islam' and 'unlawful combatant' became norms. BBC News, a collection of BBC reports on America's 'war on terrorism', (published by BBC in 2003, edited by Sara Back and Malcolm Downing) can be consulted in this respect. Referring to Islam as 'Islamist Extremism', a special report of The Economist (2 April 2005,p.22) entitled 'Living with Islam: The New Dutch Model?' writes that Muslims should know many things for living in ' an open and law-governed society' (which is the European society) and immigrant communities like Muslims that refuse to ' align their values to those of western democracy are a ticking time-bomb'.

The American/Western media has always played a 'diplomatic' role in laying (pseudo) justified claims to Bush's war on 'terrorism' or 'Islamic evil', applying Huntington's theory of the 'clash of civilizations' which reveals that the clashes in future would be not between nations but between cultures, more specifically between Islamic and Western culture. 'America under attack' was the 'breaking news' title of BBC and CNN following the 9/11 plane attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. No doubt, the attack was unbelievable and unprecedented (BBC and CNN title also says this) and the effort is there, in using such a title, to enlarge its scope thousand times, telling people how the most impossible thing happened. These media outlets never used a caption like 'Afghanistan/Iraq under attack' when America attacked these countries, giving the clear impression that America is justified in launching its 'war on terrorism' against them. The cover page title of The Economist following America's Afghanistan attack read: 'A heart-rending but just war'. Max Boot, one of the Bush administration's policy makers, has recently published a book entitled The Savage Wars of Peace (Basic Books, May 2003). What a farce! Who will believe that America wants to bring peace in the world through war? The Americanized western media believes in this 'peace' policy and is telling us about so. Mr. Boot says in his book that the American soldiers serving in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere are 'social workers'. He argues that America should not be afraid to fight 'the savage wars of peace' if necessary 'to enlarge the empire of liberty'. Look at Mr. Boot's language!

The BBC and the CNN churns out lexical constructions such as 'Operation Enduring Freedom', 'Operation Iraqi Freedom', blackmailing people by not telling them that here 'freedom' meant 'occupation' (as Arundhuti Roy stated). Regrettably, the media never questions what kind of freedom it is that America was trying to achieve. Interestingly, the media has rather sent journalists 'embedded' with the armed forces to report on the war successes of their patrons, and not the horrors of the American attack. The one term that the media repeatedly uses to justify the American attack upon Iraq is WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) that Saddam possesses as if America and its allies have no such WMD. America pre-empted attacks upon Afghanistan and Iraq to stop them midway before they could strike it further.

In fact, the American 'war on terrorism' is a mask for occupying geo-politically important regions like the Middle East and the Central Asia to feed its hegemonic purposes. The Iraq war was the result of two 'big' lies, as Chomsky says in the interview mentioned above. Firstly, Iraq was an imminent threat to the security of the US and the logic was that unless we stop it today, it is going to destroy us tomorrow. Secondly, Iraq was behind September 11. The American media ran its propaganda along with these lies. The media never asked why 9/11 happened or challenged the Bush administration for its fabricated or manufactured account of 9/11. They never told the American public about the trans-Afghanistan pipeline deal signed in December 2002, which was the real reason Bush and Co. bombed Afghanistan to smithereens. They seemed to be totally oblivious of the fact that the oil of the Middle East was the ultimate cause of American 'war on terrorism'. One thing they did most perfectly: they brainwashed the American people and the like-minded world community into believing a heap of lies regarding burgeoning Islamic terror and Iraqi WMD, among others. Few days back, I was reading an issue of Current History (vol.101, January 2002) at the DU Library. I found all the articles here speaking for and about the security and freedom of Americans as well as America's place in the world in the wake of 9/11, America's just 'war on terrorism'. The first line of an article entitled 'America's Approch to the Middle East: Legacies, Questions and Possibilities', written by Augustus Richard Norton reads: ' How prudently will the United States spend the momentum it has won in the impressive defeat of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan?' The writer with decisive tone says: " the onslaught of September 11 sprang from the Middle East". I was left with this impression: the American/western media is playing a complicitous role with the CIA and the Pentagon in building up an American empire. The media here is embedded in American imperial hegemony: it is an effective tool of imperialism.

Playing such a role, the Americanized western media has implanted 'fear' in the minds of the American public. Rather than asking the Bush Administration why 9/11 happened or challenging its manufactured account of the happening, it is bent on giving the impression that the hands of Islamic terror are behind the attack. By acting in this manner, the media also helped Bush to come to power for the second time. Few days before the presidential election, the media released a simulated image of Laden in a videotape blurting out his threat to America and we know that it acted as a great manufacturer of public support for Bush. It sold Laden to the Americans to buy the presidential berth for jingoist Bush. The whole thing is rooted in America's imperial discourse.

Mohammad Shahidul Islam is Lecturer in English, Eastern University, Dhaka