Grab taken from an Islamic State video shows British freelance photojournalist, John Cantlie. (Agence France-Press)
The latest propaganda video by the Islamic State is horrible to watch, but the message is muddled.
The same terrorist group that is so unreasonable it beheads journalists on video is now using a video of a captive journalist to try to appeal to reason.
The title of the latest manifesto is "Lend Me Your Ears."
It's a painful image and a confusing one: A black backdrop frames the journalist, John Cantlie, as if he were being interviewed in an HBO documentary. He is seated at a table, not kneeling in the sand, and speaks with a clear, confident almost jaunty cadence that clashes with his gaunt face and orange jumpsuit.
Cantlie says. "Well, it's true. I am a prisoner. That I cannot deny. But, seeing as I've been abandoned by my government and my fate now lies in the hands of the Islamic State, I have nothing to lose. Maybe I will live, and maybe I will die."
Viewers, of course, know that if he doesn't do as he's told, his chances of dying are better than maybe. The only way to convince an audience that a hostage is speaking of his own free will is to release him. Instead, Cantlie says he will appear in other videos to dispute Western depictions of the men holding him captive.
"I'm going to show you the truth behind the systems and motivations of the Islamic State and how the Western media, the very organization I used to work for, can twist and manipulate that truth for the public back home."
In a way, it's as clumsy a tack as the State Department's recent video, "Think Again, Turn Away," which was posted online to deter Western sympathizers from joining the jihadists. It was edited with the sarcasm of a political attack ad, where dark imagery - in this case, lurid slaughter and destruction - is juxtaposed with snarky copy: "Travel is inexpensive ... because you won't need a return ticket!"
Would-be terrorists open to Islamic State propaganda may be more likely to be incited by images of gunfire, exploding buildings and bombed mosques than dissuaded. Those are exactly the kinds of images the Islamic State uses in its own recruitment videos. Danger, destruction and death are the lure, not the downside.
For a while now, the self-anointed Islamic State seemed better at video agitprop than the West. Here, the group that has declared war on Western values is using a Western hostage to ask the West for peace and understanding.
But it's not the West that is threatening to kill the messenger.
Cantlie tells the camera that he will explain what the Islamic State is really like, saying, "There are two sides to every story." That's what news anchors or defense lawyers say, but it's not what messianic extremists proclaim. Up until now, at least, there was only one side, one truth: their own.
One reason the Islamic State has been so scary is that it combines the medieval barbarism of Pol Pot with sleek, Silicon Valley media savvy. This latest video, however, is an awkward and awkwardly timed appeal: a request for reflection on the same day that the Senate approved the training and arming of Syrian rebels. Cantlie warns that the West is embarking on an "unwinnable conflict."
If it is, then why would extremists ask viewers to lobby their governments for peace? What ever happened to "Bring it on"?
The producers of this video so want to be heard and understood that they forced Cantlie to act as if his statement were his own, not theirs, as if his surname - so close to Can't Lie - would be enough.
"I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, 'He's only doing this because he's a prisoner. He's got a gun at his head, and he's being forced to do this,' right?"
© 2014, The New York Times News Service