editorial" "
Felling a tree needs nothing but brute strength. Growing a tree needs a lot of care and attention, and many years of patience. It’s clear that if a relatively short space of time was needed to topple the totalitarian and brutal regime of Saddam Hussein, it won’t be so easy to build peace in Iraq. With the end of the detested regime of Saddam, the war has brought with its enormous damage hypocritically called “collateral” which will need many years to repair, not to mention the innumerable victims among the civilian population, whose death is irreparable. Let me point out three instances of this damage. A first kind of damage is the humiliation of the Iraqi people, and with them the Arab “nation” as a whole. We cannot imagine how far the legitimate pride of these peoples has been wounded: a wounded pride that has already given rise to so many acts of terrorism. Now, we Europeans who live in close contact with the Arabs, and share with them a common Mediterranean spirit, are in a good position to help them rediscover their pride as individuals and peoples in other ways than by terrorism and acts of desperation. The way forward is clear, though not easy: we must respect them, and ensure they be respected, in their human dignity. There will be no lasting peace without this respect. It will be the first task of the media, in this regard, to systematically combat the pejorative image and stereotypes of which they are the victims in the Western world (in Europe, but far more so in the USA). In the cultural field, in the spiritual field, as well as in that of the art of daily life, this ought to form a permanent focus of attention by newspapers and journalists: that of grasping every favourable opportunity to foster the many human riches transmitted by the Arab world. A second form of this war’s “collateral” damage is the powerful return of the bitter past of the Crusades. In the West, making this connection is proof of criminal irresponsibility. In the East, this crusading past dramatically created a gulf between Christians and Moslems, and tragically confirmed all the more simplistic prejudices of an age-old hostility. One of the main reasons why the Churches so strenuously opposed this war was that they were perfectly aware of its consequences. It is therefore particularly urgent to repudiate this spirit of Crusade through acts of interreligious brotherhood. It is up to journalists, who bear primary responsibility for fostering mutual understanding among peoples, to develop everything that may contribute to interreligious dialogue. Lastly, a third element of crisis: the rift between the European governments on common foreign policy. At the same time, however, there has been a surprising convergence of European public opinion. Is it not therefore the responsibility of the media, interpreters and exponents of this public opinion, to furnish it with the means to enable its voice to be better heard? For there will be no European foreign policy if European citizens do not accept it in one way or the other. But this presupposes that the media of our various countries deliberately act accordingly, that they regularly report on what is being expressed in other countries, so as to progressively form a genuine European public opinion. To this end, would it be so difficult to establish a genuine partnership between the press and the audiovisual media of the various countries, not of capitalist but editorial type, with the regular exchange of editorials, articles, information, reflections? But who will assume the risk and responsibility for this? That would be a noble task for the Christian associations of journalists and of the means of communication: creating in some way an environment that may foster initiatives of this kind.
