Disasters, Tragedies and Acts of War

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6294198.stm
'Firefighters who lost colleagues in the 9/11 attacks in New York have issued a video strongly criticising Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani.... The video - which also offers testimony from other firefighters and their relatives - says Mr Giuliani is exploiting the disaster as a theme for his presidential candidacy.'

I am not by any stretch the first person to notice this, but it still rankles. When the BBC call 9/11 a disaster, they are actually changing the category in which that event sits. Disasters are volcanoes exploding, tsunamis rolling in, cyclones devastating coastlines and meteors blasting holes in the ground. Disasters are sometimes tragedies, in which an element of human weakness or cowardice plays a role in the deaths of people. 9/11 was not a disaster. 9/11 was an act of war, one in a long line, committed by men who saw themselves as stormtroopers of Islam. 19 highly committed men plotted to take over airliners and crash them into buildings. To call those actions a disaster is to abuse the truth.

The BBC has a whole suite of editorial tools for minimizing the actions of Wahhabis, of making them 'disappear', and attempting to remove them from the ledger that inevitably many people mentally keep. Naming things and categorising them is very important. Without accurate naming and categorisation, we don't really have a clear picture of what is happening. Even now, in July 2007, the British government and millions of Britons have virtually no idea of the shape and nature of our Wahhabist enemy. The BBC, because it is confident that it has the correct view of the world, is willing to distort and manipulate its reporting of events so they fit the lefty/PC world view. This deprives the people of Britain and many other countries the chance of putting the pieces together and working out who and what are driving events.

Over a long period of time, this can really deprive a nation of its bearings. I hold the BBC board of governers and its pitiful editorial management responsible for much of the current misunderstanding and misapprehension in the general population.