The ISIS-Ray Rice connection

THERE'S a double-feature at the Stu-niversity today - reaction to foreign and domestic terrorism produced by images that change the way we think.

"War weary" Americans were unmoved by thousands of Muslim and Christian deaths in the Mideast last year, with only 21 percent favoring military attacks on Syria. Then we saw the grotesque beheading of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff. Now 61 percent of Americans favor attacking Syria, a main base for ISIS. Both numbers are from NBC News polling.

The U-turn of opinion was caused by the snuff-porn videos.

In "domestic terrorism," Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice escaped serious career harm after dropping his girlfriend in a Revel elevator. When we saw him dragging her limp body from the elevator, we knew what happened, but when we saw the video of his left hook, everything changed for him.

In each case, none of the facts had changed, just our perception and reaction to them.

In the past, armies of evil - Nazis, the Soviet Union, North Korea, Chinese communists, Khmer Rouge - sought to hide their crimes. Al Qaeda and ISIS broadcast them.

"We have to think of these videos and the related social media as part of a strategic communication campaign, a public-relations campaign," says Andrew Mendelson, chairman of Temple's journalism department. It gives them international street cred that helps them with recruiting, fundraising and spreading fear.

Founding military strategist Sun Tzu, the William Shakespeare of tactics, wrote that a crucial preliminary to battle is attacking the mind of the enemy. He proposed using spies to plant false information to create fear and confuse the enemy.

In today's world, social media are those agents.

"It's a tool for establishing terror and fear," says Mendelson, "to show they are strong and deadly as they say they are."

But might it have the effect of galvanizing us, as the beheading videos have done?

"In the long run it may be devastating to them," says Mendelson, "but in the short run it's a huge boost because they are playing with the big boys, or appear to be."

At home, we have the Rice videos.

The first one, with Rice dragging his girlfriend like a laundry bag, "allows people reasonable 'doubt,' " he says.

When the second video emerged, it "shut that doubt down and then we have to address it as it did happen," says Mendelson.

As with the murdered journalists, it suddenly became personal, with a real individual, not an aggregate of civilians we didn't know, says Mendelson.

When the horror is personalized the impact moves from the intellectual to the visceral. It strikes a nerve when the victim is one of "ours," one of our tribe. While we may have intellectual empathy for foreigners, seeing an American beheaded strikes an emotional chord in us, and that's why public opinion swung around. It changed our reality.

Some see the beheadings as a blunder, others theorize ISIS is trying to taunt us into battle on their terms because they believe they are on mission from God. Sun Tzu recommends never fighting the enemy on his terms.

Wednesday night, President Obama said, "If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven."

ISIS may learn, in words attributed to Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto after Pearl Harbor, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

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