BBC For Kerry

The BBC has long been pro-Arab, scorned the war on terrorism despite Britain's participation in the Iraq coalition, and beatified the Palestinians (a recent study of 17 BBC documentaries over 43 months found one left a favourable impression of Israel, another one was balanced and fifteen either were negative about Israel or positive of Palestine"). Famously, the British radio/television network refers to Osama bin Laden as nothing stronger than "Saudi-born dissident."

Apparently doubling its bet before the U.S. elections, starting Wednesday, BBC2 will air a three-part "documentary" called "Terrorism, Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear." The show focuses on the probabilities and destructiveness of Islamic terrorism in general and so-called "dirty bombs" in particular. Even the left-wing Guardian calls it "controversial", because the BBC show,

seeks to overturn much of what is widely believed about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. The latter, it argues, is not an organised international network. It does not have members or a leader. It does not have "sleeper cells". It does not have an overall strategy. In fact, it barely exists at all, except as an idea about cleansing a corrupt world through religious violence.

Here's BBC's "dirty bomb" threat assessment:

[It] is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media.

So why are citizens still scared? BBC explains:

In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power.

And BBC identifies the real culprits whose differing political philosophies grew to a fight for world domination :

The series tells an epic story, at the heart of which are two groups: the American Neoconservatives and the Radical Islamists. The first film begins in 1949 and traces the lives of two men living in America: Egyptian school inspector, Sayyid Qutb, whose ideas would later directly inspire those who flew the planes on 9/11, and political philosopher Leo Strauss, whose work strongly influenced the Neoconservative movement that now dominates Washington. Both men believed that modern liberal freedoms were eroding the bonds that held society together, but both had very different ideas about how to improve the situation.

Hmmm. Sayyid Qutb up against Leo Strauss. The first, an Egyptian Koran scholar who founded modern Islamic terrorism to destroy Western civilization; the second a Jew who emigrated to America and taught political philosophy (relying heavily on ancient Greeks) at the University of Chicago. One was civilized; the other anti-civilized. Both of them decades dead (Sayyid: 35 years; Strauss: 28 years) on 9/11. I doubt they ever met. But somehow--in lower Manhattan on 9/11, aboard the USS Cole, in Embassies--the BCC program will tie terrorism to complex social stratification and capped educational opportunities.

I'm sure the upcoming BBC program will be, well, captivating. But it ignores basic, simple facts: Leo Strauss taught philosophy; Sayyid Qutb coached killing. And the best way to stop terrorism is to kill terrorists. If the BBC hasn't figured this out by now, it shouldn't qualify for the U.K. per-television "tax" by which it's funded.