‘Real World: Baghdad’

In Iraq, television entrepreneurs have been trying out an American innovation: reality TV. But there’s a local twist.

Here in the U.S., as in most First World countries, reality TV participants are generally required to endure privation, risk or some other form of creatively devised unpleasantness to keep the ratings up.

In Iraq, instead of placing participants in artificially contrived situations of danger and discomfort, reality TV takes ordinary people and puts them into situations that make them, well, happy.

On the Al Sharqiya satellite channel, “Labor and Materials” rebuilds bomb-shattered homes and features families deliriously pleased with having their broken windows fixed and their charred appliances replaced with spanking new ones. Another show sends sick people overseas for high-quality medical care not available in Iraq. A third, on rival channel Al Iraqiyah, features people successfully navigating government bureaucracies to get their passports renewed and accomplish other mundane tasks.

Unlike Americans and Europeans, Iraqis don’t need to watch made-for-TV suffering: They have plenty of genuine misery and danger right there at home.

It’s the things Americans view as ordinary that seem exotic to Iraqi TV viewers: a roof without bomb damage, decent healthcare, a government that delivers core services and, most of all, the safety needed to enjoy these mundane things.

In Iraq, an estimated 8,000 civilians were killed in attacks by insurgents during the first six months of 2005, and suicide bombs are numbingly familiar.

And although Iraq is an extreme case, it is not unique. In Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel (and the West Bank and Gaza), Indonesia, Colombia, large swathes of Africa and dozens of other unstable countries, residents also live with levels of terror and suffering almost unimaginable to most Americans.

For all of our somber talk about the dangers we face in the post-9/11 world, extreme violence is not part of our daily reality.

That’s what gives us the luxury of watching, with rapt pleasure, the contrived privation and risk confronted by reality TV contestants -- and the similar luxury of being astonished and outraged by the occasional intrusion of genuine terrorist violence into places such as London and Madrid, which look perilously like “our” world.

But we should not expect our relative immunity to last. There will be more terrorist attacks in Europe and in America, and like the rest of the world, we’re probably going to have to become accustomed to the ever-present possibility to violent death.

This is the war on terror’s dirty little secret: Terrorism is here to stay, though our leaders don’t like to admit it. That’s because terrorism is a method, not a movement.

Historically, it’s not even a new method. Those who lack armies but not axes to grind have always resorted to surprise attacks on civilians and other “soft” targets.

Our language still reflects this: The original Zealots were 1st century Jews who used what we would today call “terrorism” to strike at Romans and their Jewish collaborators, while the 11th century Islamic sect, the Assassins, attacked those who refused to adopt their approach to Islam.

More attacks like those in London are virtually certain to occur; next time, it could well be Los Angeles, Chicago or Miami. Bombing sorties and spy satellites can help prevent large, well-organized groups of terrorists from developing nuclear weapons -- but such techniques will no more prevent fanatics from fashioning homemade bombs and detonating them in subways than they can prevent future Columbine-style school shootings.

This doesn’t mean we should just give up, of course. Although it’s folly to think we can “end” terrorism completely, we can certainly develop smart anti-terror strategies that will help keep terrorism the exception rather than the rule.

Perhaps, most of all, if we want to reduce terrorism, we need to move beyond purely military and intelligence strategies and get serious about the slow task of helping those around the world who don’t yet enjoy the safety, freedom and comfort we Americans want so much to keep. That’s necessity, not charity: Weak and failed states offer safe harbor for terrorist planners, while poverty, conflict and festering injustice create a ready pool of terrorist recruits.

To be sure, there will always be angry and disaffected young men looking for excuses to kill. But reducing poverty, repression and violent conflict will make excuses for engaging in terrorism harder to come by and give ordinary people less reason to tolerate ideologies that encourage terror.

This is a long-term project, and measuring success won’t be easy. But when reality TV viewers in Iraq and other unstable countries stop regarding the simple provision of shelter, medical care and government services as fascinatingly exotic, it will be one sign that we’re on the right track.