Can America “Spin” Away Anti-U.S. Hatred in Islamic Countries?
http://www.independent.org/tii/news/031014Eland.html
The Independent Institute
October 14, 2003
By Ivan Eland*
A study group chosen by the Bush administration has just spent the
public’s tax dollars reaching a conclusion worthy of Rip Van Winkle:
“Hostility toward America has reached shocking levels.” And their
recommendation for a remedy is to spend even more government money
enhancing and revamping U.S. public relations efforts among Moslems.
Unfortunately, putting lipstick on a U.S. government pig is difficult.
A better solution is to do the difficult soul-searching needed for a
change in U.S. policies toward the Islamic world.
What is troubling is the panel’s use of public funds to conduct a study
that stated the obvious and downplayed the root cause of the anger
among Moslems. If the U.S. government really wanted to find out what
the people in Islamic countries really thought about America, rather
than commissioning a study, it would have been much cheaper to have
asked John Zogby, a prominent pollster and study group member, and
other prominent independent pollsters for the results of their numerous
polls in those nations. Those polls show that people in those countries
like American culture and political and economic freedoms, but despise
U.S. foreign policy toward the Islamic world. Another of the panelists,
Stephen P. Cohen of the Israel Policy Forum, admitted that many of the
Moslems interviewed by the study group in Islamic countries held “a
great deal of regard for American values.” The Moslem elites
interviewed also clearly indicated that the problem was U.S. government
policy, not its public relations.
Instead of using polling results directly, the government paid for the
panel to filter their message—that is, to acknowledge, but downplay,
policy causes of anti-U.S. hatred and to conclude that Washington could
do much to make its case and counter widespread misinformation among
Moslems overseas. The study group warned that the intensifying
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the U.S. invasion of Iraq had spiked
anti-American hatred, but then reached the curious conclusion that
people throughout the world are ignorant or misinformed about U.S.
polices. The panel further concluded that in the last 10 years,
American unilateral disarmament in the weapons of public relations had
contributed to the widespread anti-American sentiment, which threatened
the nation’s interests and safety.
But any Arab or Moslem—or anyone else with a newspaper, radio or
TV—could see the one-sided American policy favoring Israel and the
conquest of a sovereign Islamic nation that posed no imminent threat to
the invading country. In fact, from a Moslem perspective, the U.S.
invasion and occupation of Iraq might appear similar to what Saddam
Hussein perpetrated in Kuwait in 1990. One could forgive Moslems for
being “misinformed” or “ignorant” of the “benefits” of U.S. policy for
their part of the world.
The twin problems here are a lack of introspection on the part of U.S.
policymakers and the desire of a government bureaucracy for more funds.
The inability of the American government to see what is now painfully
obvious to the rest of the world is not new. Last year, the Bush
administration, to spruce up the American image in the Islamic world,
created a program called “shared values.” The program consisted of
television commercials showing Moslems in the United States enjoying
dignified lives of equality. The administration gave up on the ads
after several Arab nations nixed them. Even many in the administration
privately agreed with Moslems who thought that they ignored Islamic
unhappiness with U.S. policies toward Israel and Iraq. The study
group’s conclusions continue the American tendency to avoid honest
self-examination.
Also, the results of the panel’s report were warmly greeting by
high-level State Department officials—and undoubtedly by the
congressional requesters of the study—who see dollar signs dancing in
their heads. The report dutifully notes, “To say that financial
resources [for public diplomacy] are inadequate to the task is a gross
understatement.” The panel recommended creating a new bureaucracy and
undertaking additional public diplomacy projects, all of which require
more tax dollars. The study advocated creating a new White House office
of public diplomacy that would be redundant to the State Department’s
existing function. The panel also urged that the government translate
more Western books into Arabic, train more Arabists and public
relations specialists, enhance U.S. activity on the internet, hand out
more scholarships and fellowships, and construct libraries and
information centers in Islamic countries.
But people in the Islamic world have grown skeptical of governments’
affinity for propaganda. And they will regard the intensification of
the U.S. government’s spin as much of the same. If the study group’s
recommendations are adopted, the added bureaucratic heat in Washington
will undoubtedly fall on cold ears in Islamic nations. Only American
policy changes that are in the interests of both the United States and
the Islamic world—for example, taking a more neutral stance toward the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and rapidly returning Iraq to Iraqi
governance–will begin to soften Moslem ill-will toward America.
*Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace &
Liberty at The Independent Institute in Oakland, CA., and author of the
book, Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy: Rethinking U.S.
Security in the Post-Cold War World. For further articles and studies,
see the War on Terrorism and OnPower.org.
Comment:
The muslims see America as the pharoah of today who is opressing the world with their corrupt way of life capitalism. Who violates all laws existent in the world today and has no respect for humanity. The ends justify the means and they have no permenent friends or enemies they just have intrests which are constantly changing. The muslim people have come to realise that their only saviour is to return back to the Islamic teachings and follow them in its entirety and this is happening all over the Islamic world.
talk about the pot calling the kettle black!