Thursday, July 28, 2011

Terrorism Experts on Parade

But Kohlmann does have excellent credentials in the agenda-driven, neocon-dominated world of terrorism punditry, and that is what really counts, because association with right-wing or pro-Israel organizations is a sine qua non. He first became involved in studying terrorism during his freshman year at Georgetown University. In 1998, he began an internship with The Investigative Project on Terrorism, a think tank set up by Steve Emerson — a notably Islamophobic journalist who had also become a terrorism expert. Emerson, who also cannot speak any Middle Eastern languages, was one of the first to proclaim that Oklahoma City was an attack by Muslims, without producing any evidence whatsoever, arguing that “inflicting as many casualties as possible is a Middle Eastern trait.” He later claimed that the “U.S. has become occupied fundamentalist territory.” As Alexander Cockburn once observed, Emerson’s “prime role is to whitewash Israeli governments and revile their critics.”

Kohlmann is just one manifestation of the global war on terror’s big-money expert business. Like many of his colleagues, he is selling a product, and the product is all too often denigrating and targeting Muslims because he knows he will have access to the mainstream media to do so. Why does he do it? Partly because he knows that’s where the money is and partly because it has given him his moment of fame. Andy Warhol said someday everyone would have 15 minutes of fame, and it might be that this is Kohlmann’s time in the sun. Someday perhaps he will regret what he now does for a living, but, for the present, asking him to develop a conscience or a sense of responsibility would likely be to seek too much. In the meantime, he continues to do that which brought him to prominence: playing the role of an expert in order to arouse the same sort of fear in jury and military commission members as well as television viewers as neocon websites incited in the Norwegian terrorist.

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