The New Nation - Internet Edition

Phillip Knightley

WHEN, in the aftermath of 9/11, George W. Bush was mobilising the nation for revenge, he said, "If you're not with us, you're against us". It took some time for it to sink in that this included the American media. When it did sink it, American newspapers and television rushed to show their patriotism.

European editors were appalled as the media's critical faculties went out the window. The then director general of the BBC, Greg Dyke said he was shocked by how unquestioning the American broadcast media was during that period. He said American TV news stations "wrapped themselves in the American flag and substituted patriotism for impartiality."

Since then the American media seems to have come to its senses. The New York Times and the Washington Post have apologised to their readers over their coverage. Now author Susan Faludi, in her new book "The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post 9/11 America" looks at the nation's reflexive reaction to the attack on the twin towers and finds something wanting that exposed a "counterfeit belief system".

She says that instead of enabling the country to cope with the very real emergency at hand, it divided Americans into two-men and women. "The attack on New York launched a concomitant attack on feminism, unleashing a torrent of regressive sexism in response to a sense of national impotence."

Faludi points to the emphasis on the sexy machismo of the Bush administration with headlines like "The Stud: Donald Rumsfeld", America's new pin up". Time and Newsweek promised a President who would be" lone ranger" and dragon slayer".

There were predictions that women would abandon their careers and return to their domestic duties, leaving their menfolk free to face battle. Faludi says that women were thus marginalised and excluded from being heroes themselves. Firefighters went back to being known as "firemen" and the many female rescue workers written out of the tale.

They were written out of the story of Flight 93, too. In the media version, a band of all-American sports heroes stormed the cockpit of the United Flight and overpowered the terrorists. Not true, says Faludi. A group did try to fight off the hijackers but failed to get into the cockpit and the group included at least one woman.

And what about the Jessica Lynch story, a story totally manipulated by Department of Defense propagandists. Private Lynch was captured by Iraqis and taken for treatment to an Iraqi hospital. Eight days later, a US Special Forces tea stormed the hospital and "rescued" Lynch, taking her away by helicopter.

The whole dramatic event was captured on video by a Pentagon team using night vision cameras. Her rescue was hailed by President Bush as an example of a core American value-they took care of their own people. Faludi has interviewed Lynch and she has confirmed it was not like that at all. The Iraqis were taking good care of Lynch after a devastating car wreck and had been trying to return her to the Americans before the raid took place. When Lynch resisted demands that she stick to the Pentagon story, the US Press turned on her.

Faludi writes, "Who got the blame in the US media? Feminists, for allegedly trying to pass of Lynch as a 'female Rambo'." Faludi says the result of all this is that any remotely feminist argument was instantly denounced as unpatriotic. There was a forty per cent drop in federal prosecutions of sex discrimination cases.

Sarah Churchwell, a lecturer in American literature at the University of East Anglia, reviewing Faludi's book in The Guardian, says Faludi offers a convincing case that there has been a wholesale assault on women's rights in the United States, all in the name of national security.