Al Manar Responds to Obama's Plan for Afghanistan

Today, coinciding with Obama’s announcement about his new plan for Afghanistan, Al Manar added a number of opinion pieces highly critical of the United States to its news homepage. These articles are both critical of US involvement in Afghanistan thus far as well as critical of US past actions and treatment of Muslim communities. All of these critical articles are written by Western authors, predominantly American liberals.

Among the new articles is a call to indict Dick Cheney for war crimes by Matthew Rothschild, who is the editor of American political magazine The Progressive as well as an article about Obama’s manipulative control over Afghan President Karzai by Ron Jacobs from the website antiwar.com. Additionally, there is an article by Canadian research institute Global Research detailing how the Western presence in Afghanistan is both failing and expanding, and a piece from the Christian Science Monitor about deteriorating relations between the FBI and American Muslim communities.


As for Al Manar’s own coverage of Obama’s plan for Afghanistan is less notable. The stories provide quotes from Obama as well as American officials and note that the governments in Pakistan and Afghanistan have welcomed Obama’s plan to root out extremists.It is interesting that Al Manar has thus far refrained from criticizing Obama’s strategy regarding Afghanistan but instead allowed proxy communicators to provide critical information. This critical information is not directly addressing Obama’s new plan but instead looks at America’s past efforts in the Middle East, as well as the Bush administration’s legacy of human rights abuses and tensions with Muslims. I believe that the op-ed articles are consistent with Al Manar's spirit of resistence to Western dominance and attempt to cast American presence in the Middle East in a negative light. Al Manar is trying to shape audience response to Obama's plan indirectly by providing the audience with stories reminding readers of American misteps in the Middle East and mistreatment of Muslims on American soil.