On Monday, the Justice Department and the FBI released a redacted transcript of a call from the Orlando, Fla., shooter to a 911 dispatcher. What was blotted out in this redaction? The names of victims? Grotesque audio of people suffering and dying? Perhaps a detail that might have compromised an investigation?
No, what was redacted was the shooter’s statement of motive: his allegiance to the Islamic State and its leader. The redactions brought on so much criticism that by Monday afternoon, Justice and the FBI reversed themselves, releasing the full transcript with a statement.
“The unreleased portions of the transcript that named the terrorist organizations and leaders have caused an unnecessary distraction from the hard work that the FBI and our law enforcement partners have been doing to investigate this heinous crime,” it read.
The question you’re probably asking yourself is: What on earth was the purpose of this ridiculous exercise in the first place? Any casual follower of the news — including anyone following this very story about the redactions — knows already that the shooter pledged allegiance to the Islamic State repeatedly during his massacre, and that the Islamic State returned the favor with a quick claim of credit.
As desperate as some writers in the mainstream media seemed to create alternative explanations for the shooter’s actions, or to cast blame on Christians who had nothing to do with it, the killer went to great trouble during his well-planned atrocity to make his precise motivations known.
Believe it or not, there is actually a method to the government’s madness of downplaying the Islamic State’s role. The only problem is that its usefulness expired long ago with the Obama administration’s credibility in dealing with the Islamic State.
Even before the rise of the Islamic State, security professionals worried that excessively transparent public discussions of Islamic terrorists’ motives could risk reinforcing their propaganda. The concept isn’t completely ridiculous in isolation. But if one sets aside all context and common sense, it can lead to the absurd conclusion that there’s some actual point in hiding the Orlando shooter’s statement of his motives.
The very name “Islamic State” provides an example of how this thinking works, and also of its limitations.
As it seeks to recruit from a pool of 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide, the Islamic State advertises with this moniker two of its main benefits: first, that it is a faithfully Islamic organization to which they already owe allegiance; second, that it is a real, honest-to-goodness state, capable of much more than the average ragtag terrorist group.
Thus, the very name “Islamic State” is a lesson in good branding. It hints at a lasting and highly effective institution of divine inspiration, which is destined to win.
If you can understand why the Islamic State propaganda seeks to promote such a message, then you can at least partly understand why American officials are so eager to contradict it. No, they reply, there is nothing genuinely Islamic about this group, nor is it a real state.
The problem with this game of “speak no evil” arises when the United States government clumsily sticks to a message it cannot back up, to the point of losing its own credibility instead of impugning the credibility of the enemy.
For example, however small the share of the world’s Muslims who actually sympathize with the Islamic State or its goals or methods, it is likely still larger in number than the share who recognize President Obama or his cabinet as legitimate authorities to pronounce on what is and is not Islamic.
Moreover, it’s all well and good to deny the group’s statehood, but what evidence have American officials produced to the contrary? The Islamic State controls major cities, polices domestic crimes, imposes taxes, administers a welfare system and has enjoyed extensive successes on the battlefield against conventional militaries — including a half-hearted American military commitment.
The discrediting of the group’s Islamic nature must ultimately fall to Islamic clerics, some of whom are doing their level best. The discrediting of the Islamic State’s statehood would require something the U.S. is capable of but clearly not committed to — its decisive and violent destruction on the battlefield.
It is not a bad thing that American officials at least want to discredit the Islamic State’s propaganda, but their words alone cannot even begin to accomplish this. Monday’s un-redaction of the Orlando 911 transcript represents a small concession to reality by Obama administration officials who have been refusing to face or acknowledge the extent of the threat for two and a half years now.
