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the State Department ramps up its policy to win over the hearts
and minds of the Arab world in its new war terrorism, U.S. policies
may be getting in the way.
On Friday,
State Department spokesman and the Assistant Secretary for Public
Diplomacy Charlotte Beers gave an overview at the Washington Foreign
Press Center. The plan includes joint press centers on three continents,
an extensive new website, a concerted effort to get U.S. officials
in front of television cameras from the Arab media, prominent Muslim-American
spokesmen, and a whole lot of spin.
"We're
going to tell the truth, and we're going to try to make sure that
people understand that we're going to tell them, you know, the whole
thing," Boucher told foreign journalists in Washington.
The day Beers
and Boucher went through this elaborate presentation on the essential
kindness of the new American campaign, UPI's story hit the Washington
Times detailing the new State Department policy to essentially
profile all Arab men of fighting age before granting them a temporary
visa.
Secretary of
State Colin Powell told Fox News Friday that the policy which requires
an additional 20-day waiting period for 16- to 45-year-old men from
over 20 Arab and Muslim nations, was necessary to protect America's
borders.
"I want
to assure everybody, however, that the United States remains an
open country. We want people to come to our shores. But at the same
time, we have to protect ourselves. And so this will be a temporary
inconvenience in a number of countries, and then we hope we will
get through it rather quickly," he said. This is coming from
a man that took on his own party at the 1996 GOP Convention in a
speech where he chastised advocates for tighter immigration laws.
When asked
whether the new policy would undercut the public diplomacy campaign,
Jim Zogby president of the Arab-American Institute said in an interview
Friday, "Duh. It's obvious this sends a message that complicates
the effort of public diplomacy and threatens to put further strains
on our relationships."
But the new
visa policy is only the latest in a series of moves that have angered
the Arab world. Washington's reluctance to move beyond rhetoric
in pressuring Israel to pull its troops from Palestinian territory;
the fact that food packets dropped from the skies on Afghanistan
are the same color as cluster bombs dropped on the Taliban; and
President Bush's decision not to meet with Yasser Arafat are just
three complaints Arabs voice over the U.S. prosecution of the war
on terror. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice accused Arafat
Thursday of "hugging" the anti-Israel terror group Hamas
at a press conference beamed all over the world, a remark still
reverberating in the region's capitals.
So American
diplomats have their work cut out for them and that work is being
done not just in public outreach but also through less-public diplomacy
with Arab states, moderate and extreme alike.
Since the bombing
campaign in Afghanistan started on October 7, U.S. ambassadors have
been instructed to push Arab states to rein in their own media,
a far easier task in countries with a state run press. One of the
ways for example, Foggy Bottom bureaucrats have measured Syrian
cooperation with Washington Post September 11 is through
the absence of articles criticizing the Afghanistan bombing campaign.
In Qatar, the
country that provided the start-up funds for and still partially
owns what is generally recognized as the most successful experiment
in free media in the Arab World — al Jazeera, U.S. officials
have quietly pressured the foreign ministry to use its influence
with the network to run more moderate voices in their public-affairs
shows and news casts. In Venezuela, Washington recalled its ambassador
for five days after President Hugo Chavez went on national television
chastising the U.S. war with pictures of dead Afghan children.
When the argument
is made publicly, the U.S. campaign has three parts. To start U.S.
and British press operations centers in Washington, London, and
soon in Islamabad, will provide a rapid response to information
from the Taliban on the actual bombing campaign. This should be
a fairly easy task considering the Taliban's track record in providing
accurate information.
Remember the
daily messages from the Taliban after September 11 regarding Osama
bin Laden's whereabouts? The de facto Afghan government delivered
three irreconcilable messages. At first they claimed they didn't
know where he was. Then they said they will discuss handing him
over if presented with proof he was behind the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon. Finally the Taliban insisted it would
fight to protect him.
Since the air
war has started, the Taliban's information has been even less reliable.
Aid workers and reporters on the ground have debunked most of the
Taliban's casualty statistics despite a concerted effort to hide
military assets in civilian areas.
The second
more difficult task in message war is to vilify bin Laden and his
network of terrorists. So far, nearly all Arab leaders with the
notable exception of Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, have condemned
al Qaeda and the acts of September 11. Part of the new campaign,
Beers told reporters, would be a web movie depicting the attacks,
playing ominous synthesized music. The new site also features a
nice table listing everything bin Laden has said that implicates
him and his associates.
Finally, the
new public-diplomacy effort will attempt to convince the Arab world
that the new war is not against them. U.S. officials have consistently
reminded the press since October 7 that in the last ten years, the
United States has gone to war twice to defend Muslims — in
Kuwait and later in Bosnia. But both cases are slightly disingenuous.
The NATO campaign
in Bosnia started over two years after the Serb atrocities against
Muslims in that country began, for the first two and a half years
of the conflict, the United States essentially sat on the sidelines,
warily endorsing a small and ineffective U.N. peacekeeping force
in lieu of real military action.
In Iraq, President
Bush encouraged the Iraqi people to rise up against Saddam only
to fail to give them the vital air support the rebels would need,
leaving a dictator in place that would go on to kill thousands more
over the next ten years.
Both examples
reveal a more salient fact that informs the current politics surrounding
the new war on terrorism — America is the world's lone superpower
and it supports or allows most of the unfree regimes that steal
from, suppress, and stifle Arab peoples. On this point, as diabolical
as bin Laden is, he has the upper hand. Where would Egypt, a country
that this year imprisoned its most celebrated political intellectual
for accepting honorariums from foreign governments, be without U.S.
military support? What options for social mobility are there for
Palestinians living in Kuwait, a regime American troops defended
in the Gulf War? Why didn't U.S. special forces kill Saddam Hussein
when they had the chance?
And these questions
will require a lot more than fancy websites and 24-hour press centers
to answer. It will require a reexamination of American policy, war
or no war on terrorism.
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