Other Magazines

The Banality of Terrorists

Reading the boring letters found on an al-Qaida computer.

Atlantic, Sept. 2004 The revelations in the magazine’s cover story, which examines the files found on an al-Qaida computer discovered in Afghanistan, are disappointing. The letters published do little to illustrate the psychology of the terrorists; mostly they demonstrate Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil. The documents show al-Qaida arguing with the Taliban, researching chemical weapons, and asking for religious opinions on killing civilians. A short sidebar with messages written by a young suicide bomber is more revealing than the body of the article. Another article discusses the selection of a new pope and explains why the media’s obsession with horse-race reporting will cause it to overlook the larger questions of belief. The interesting yet not immediately relevant piece is the sort the magazine used to publish more often. Women may be the key to Democrats’ success in the South, another article argues. Candidates such as Inez Tenenbaum, who is running for Senate from South Carolina, exploit Southern notions of female gentility to avoid being stereotyped as out-of-touch liberals.

Economist, Aug. 14 The magazine’s cover story on doing business in the world’s conflict zones crisply summarizes the unique challenges presented by places like Afghanistan or Nigeria. The article is strangely silent, however, on the distinction between a nimble business and a war profiteer. The magazine also does not question whether private enterprises are appropriately suited to perform duties once left to armies. A special report on al-Qaida takes a long-term view that American media tend to avoid and declares that the results of the war on terror are decidedly mixed. A report card reveals that only three of the 22 terrorists from America’s October 2001 wanted list have been captured. Another article rails against the “last-minute scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel tokenism” that led Illinois Republicans to ask Alan Keyes to run against rising star Barack Obama. The choice, the magazine argues, will damage Republican attempts to reach out to minorities.

New York, Aug. 16 The magazine’s cover story represents a transparent attempt by convicted child murderer Joel Steinberg to rehabilitate his dismal public image. But the story’s author, to whom Steinberg and his attorney granted the first post-prison interview, is not so sympathetic: He attempts to sketch a meta-story about reporters and their subjects along the lines of The Journalist and the Murderer. Neither Steinberg nor the author get what they want, however, and the piece turns into an unwieldy mess. James Atlas’article about life in New York during an age of terror is an impressive testament to the lasting psychological trauma of Sept. 11. While Atlas veers into hyperbole at points, the piece represents one of the more thoughtful responses to last week’s terror alerts. An Indian Spider-Man? Comic book purists may be outraged, but the magazine explains why Spidey will be just as at home in Mumbai as he is in New York.

New York Times Magazine, Aug. 15 Israel’s prime minister and his controversial plan for disengagement with the Arab world are the subjects of the magazine’s sweeping cover story. Ariel Sharon is difficult for Americans to understand because his influence on Israel’s development is so massive—he is “Andrew Jackson, George Patton, Robert Moses” rolled into one. Yet throughout his varied career, Sharon has operated under a single principle: “security will bring peace.” The cover story dissects that idea and highlights what may be its most serious shortcomings. In another article, the magazine tackles the underreported trend of gangs moving into suburban and rural communities. Gangs are eager to move out of the city to places where the competition for turf is less intense and the law enforcement is less sophisticated. At the same time, a new market for recruits has emerged as poor immigrants head to industrial jobs springing up outside the major urban centers.

Weekly Standard, Aug. 16 & 23 The magazine’s cover story responds to “Reading at Risk,” the recent survey that reported reading of literature declined 10 percent between 1982 and 2002. Although partially an attack on the survey (which considers the romance-novel enthusiast better read than the historical-nonfiction buff), the piece is mostly a thoughtful consideration of reading in our culture. Bucking bipartisan consensus, the magazine assails the 9/11 report’s recommendations as conservative and unhelpful. In another article, the magazine responds to those (such as Slate’s Eric Umansky) who argue that Iraqi terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi “is a Washington-made bogeyman.” Relying on an “Iraqi intelligence” memo that describes the interrogation of a captured Zarqawi lieutenant, the magazine reports that Zarqawi’s group is a strict hierarchy with links to Iran, Syria, and al-Qaida. The information, which bolsters Iraq hawks’ arguments about the causes of the country’s instability, does not seem to be verified by any additional sources.

Time, Newsweek, and U.S. New & World Report, Aug. 16
Orange explained:
Following a week in which newspaper coverage of the raised terror alert was more confusing than enlightening, the weekly newsmagazines have unusually good stories that explain the terrorism threat lucidly and compellingly. Newsweek has the best information; its cover story reports that the orange alert, derided by many pundits and some Democrats as politically motivated, was the result of a massive ongoing effort to roll up the al-Qaida operatives working on a pre-election strike against the United States. Time’s cover piece deals less with the broad sweep of the counterterrorism efforts, focusing instead on details from the information that led to the heightened alert. The magazine also rightly chides Tom Ridge for undermining the public’s faith in the seriousness of his alert by attributing intelligence successes to the “President’s leadership.” U.S. News details the surprising successes our antiterrorism ally Pakistan has achieved in the recent operations against al-Qaida.

Jihad online:Newsweek profiles Mohammed Neem Noor Khan, the al-Qaida operative whose arrest on July 13 led to the capture of dozens of other suspects (including African Embassy bomber Ahmad Khalfan Ghailani) and the seizure of computer files that have revealed terrorist plans. Although informative about Khan, Newsweek’s article contradicts Time’s in some respects. Newsweek’s cover story describes Khan as a “midlevel logistics man” while Time’s piece calls him a “rising star in al-Qaeda’s next generation of fighters” and a “gifted techie.” The different takes seem to indicate that few reporters have been able to assess the Internet’s value to al-Qaida. Indeed, there is a dearth of good reporting about online terrorist activities. A New Yorker article that was hyped as an account of online jihadists shed little light, and this month’s Atlantic Monthly cover (“Al-Qaeda’s Hard Drive”) is similarly disappointing.