U.S. lacks direction, cohesion in war of ideas
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031030-120602-5737r.htm
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 30, 2003
The Bush administration's effort to wage a war of ideas against
terrorism is hampered by divisions among agencies and by a lack of
focus on winning Muslim support.
“On the battle of ideas, we have unilaterally disarmed,” said Marc
Ginsberg, a former ambassador to Morocco. “We have abandoned the
playing field to the [Islamist] radicals and we have failed to empower
our allies in the region with the tools they need to confront the
radicals by themselves.”
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in an interview last week
with The Washington Times that the United States is not doing enough to
counter extremist ideas, and polls have shown that public support for
America has declined sharply in the Middle East since 2000.
“We are in a war of ideas, as well as a global war on terror,” Mr.
Rumsfeld said, noting that “ideas are important, and they need to be
marshaled, and they need to be communicated in ways that are persuasive
to the listeners.”
“In many instances, we’re not the best messengers,” Mr. Rumsfeld
said, adding that the Bush administration should consider setting up a
“21st-century information agency.”
In Iraq, the Pentagon has spent about $30 million on a ground-based
television system known as the Iraq Media Network, but little on
programming, or on satellite television, which is the province of
anti-U.S. networks.
Arabs in large numbers are watching the Qatar-based Al Jazeera
satellite television network, to which Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda
terrorist network have sent tapes and messages for broadcast. Another
major satellite network is Tehran-based Al Alam, which U.S. officials
view as anti-American.
“Most Muslims think the global war on terrorism is a war against
Islam,” said Mr. Ginsberg, adding that more should be done to get
Arabic-speaking Americans on Middle East television and radio.
Several recent studies by the Congress and academic institutions
have stated that the State Department, the lead agency for promoting
American ideas, lacks direction for influencing foreign and especially
Muslim publics in ways favorable to the United States.
“Despite the best efforts of American officials, [Iraqi] media are
not getting the U.S. story,” according to a State Department report on
public diplomacy in the Muslim world. It also said that the White House
“should provide for more coherent messaging and better overall
coordination.”
The report, issued Oct. 1 by an outside advisory group, said the
department spends about $600 million annually in promoting the United
States and $540 million on broadcasting, but only $25 million on
attempting to influence the estimated 1.5 billion people in the Muslim
world.
The key to defeating terrorism is to “isolate and ultimately defeat
al Qaeda” by uniting people of all cultures by informing and educating
them that the war against terrorism is aimed at killers and not
Muslims, said Shibley Telhami, a Brookings Institution scholar who was
a member of the advisory group.
“Most people in the Arab and Muslim world like most of our basic
values and in particular democracy and freedom and our technology,” Mr.
Telhami said. “But they are clearly frustrated with our policies.”
Mr. Telhami said recent comments by Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a
senior Pentagon intelligence official, reinforced stereotypes about
Americans among the publics in the Middle East and undermined U.S.
efforts to gain support among Muslims for the war on terrorism.
“We’re saying that we’re fighting a war of ideas against horrible
killers, and we’re trying to dissuade people from joining terrorist
groups, and [saying] that this is not a religious clash,” Mr. Telhami
said.
The U.S. government plans to set up an Arabic satellite television
network in December, and has set up a radio station known as Radio
Sawa, Arabic for “together.” Radio Sawa, however, has been overwhelmed
on the airwaves by scores of overt and clandestine anti-U.S. radio
stations beaming into Iraq and the region.
Tucker Eskew, director of the White House’s Office of Global
Communications, set up to conduct tactical counter-propaganda, said the
president agrees with Mr. Rumsfeld that “we have to continue to improve
our message delivery to the rest of the world.”
During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing yesterday on
the nomination of Margaret Tutwiler to be the undersecretary of state
for public diplomacy, Sen. Richard G. Lugar, Indiana Republican and
panel chairman, said he is “deeply concerned” that U.S. efforts to
promote American ideas and values are poorly organized and funded.
Mrs. Tutwiler, a former State Department spokeswoman, told the
committee that “we all know that we as a nation have a problem.” The
administration is “trying to figure out how to best fix the situation
we find ourselves in,” she said.
The CIA, for its part, is engaged in some covert propaganda to
counter pro-terrorist propaganda and activities. But Bush
administration officials said the efforts have been far short of what
the agency did during the Cold War to counter anti-American ideological
attacks by communists and their supporters.
The Bush administration needs to open lines of communications to
people in the Muslim world, Mr. Telhami said.
“The silent majority in the Arab world have no interest in being
indoctrinated into bin Ladenism, but they are shocked that the United
States is not prepared to engage in a dialogue,” Mr. Ginsberg said.
Mr. Ginsberg said that among the methods that would help counter
Islamist ideas would be to reorient the Peace Corps to work in the
slums of major Middle East capitals, where extremist Muslim groups,
working through some charities, have succeeded in recruiting
terrorists.
He added that Middle Eastern governments need to reform education
systems to counteract the Islamist madrassas, which are teaching
anti-U.S. lessons.
According to Mr. Ginsberg, tighter immigration policies for Arabs
also have hurt by making it more difficult for Middle Eastern students
to come to the United States and be exposed to its society directly,
rather than through hostile media images.
Comment:
Yes we muslims welcome a battle of ideas between Islam and CApitalism.
America has seen the success of the Islamic activities in the middle east where the muslims have rejected western solutions and systems and are calling for Islamic ones. Also the Islamic activists make up the majority of prisoners in the muslim lands, but still the Islamic call grows stronger. Good luck America in the propaganda war, to me it seems a case of closing the door after the horse has bolted.