WASHINGTON - Al-Qaeda and radical Islamists are winning the propaganda
war against the United States, says a high-level
Pentagon panel, which concluded that President George W
Bush's administration's policies in the Middle East, its
fundamental failure to understand the Muslim world and a
lack of imagination in using new communications
technologies are responsible.
In a report
concluded in September but only released last week, the
Defense Science Board (DSB) called for a major overhaul
of Washington's "public diplomacy" and "strategic
communication" apparatus that would include much more
money and the creation of a new independent agency to
enlist the support of the private sector, researchers
and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to promote US
messages to an increasingly hostile Islamic world.
"Strategic communication is a vital component of
US national security," stresses the 111-page report. "It
is in crisis, and it must be transformed with a strength
of purpose that matches our commitment to diplomacy,
defense, intelligence, law enforcement and homeland
security ... Collaboration between government and the
private sector on an unprecedented scale is imperative."
The document also calls on US policymakers to
spend more time "listening" to their intended audience
and use messages that "should seek to reduce, not
increase, perceptions of arrogance, opportunism and
double standards".
The DSB, made up
of private sector and academic experts appointed by
Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, normally confines its
advice to scientific and technological matters. While it
has no executive authority, its prominence,
the generally hawkish cast of its membership and the urgent
tone of the report will likely place its recommendations
high on the agenda in President Bush's second term.
The study is based on interviews with senior US public-diplomacy, strategic-communication
and psychological-warfare officials
and experts along with more than a dozen
studies by NGOs, such as the Council on Foreign Relations,
public-opinion surveys and internal government
reports conducted over the past three years.
All of them have shown a sharp plunge in US
standing throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds,
particularly since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, as
well as virtually total failure of the United States to
reverse that view effectively, in large part due to the
perception among Muslims that Washington's policies are
aimed at their submission.
As one task force
headed by former president George H W Bush's top Middle
East adviser, Edward Djerejian, concluded 13 months ago,
"'Spin' and manipulative public relations and propaganda
are not the answer. Foreign policy counts ...
Sugar-coating and fast talking are no solutions."
The DSB report also stresseed that US policies in
the Mideast - notably Washington's support for Israel,
the Iraq invasion and its backing of autocratic leaders
in the region - make it very difficult for Washington to
persuade Muslims of its good intentions. The report,
however, does not advise changing policies, which would
be beyond its mandate.
The gap
between Washington's rhetoric and its actions in the region,
as perceived by Muslims, has contributed to a near
total loss of credibility, argues the study.
"The larger goals of US strategy depend on
separating the vast majority of non-violent Muslims from
the radical-militant Islamist-jihadists," it argues.
"But American efforts have not only failed in this
respect: they may also have achieved the opposite of
what they intended" by, in essence, bearing out "the
entire radical Islamist bill of particulars".
Thus, contrary to the mantra of the
administration and its neo-conservative advisers,
asserts the report, "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom',
but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming
majority voice their objections to what they see as
one-sided support in favor of Israel and against
Palestinian rights, and the long-standing even increasing
support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies,
most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and
the Gulf states."
Moreover, "when American
public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to
Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than
self-serving hypocrisy", while "saying that 'freedom is
the future of the Middle East' is seen as patronizing,
suggesting that Arabs are like the enslaved peoples of
the old Communist World", which, asserts the report, is
not how Arabs see their situation at all.
On the
contrary, it adds, the large majority yearn "to be
liberated perhaps from what they see as apostate
tyrannies that the US so determinedly promotes and
defends".
"In the eyes of Muslims, American
occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to
democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering,"
notes the document.
"The critical problem in
American public diplomacy directed toward the Muslim
world is not one of 'dissemination of information', or
even one of crafting and delivering the 'right'
message," the report states.
"Rather, it is a
fundamental problem of credibility. Simply, there is
none - the United States today is without a working
channel of communication to the world of Muslims and of
Islam. Inevitably, therefore, whatever Americans do and
say only serves the party that has both the message and
the 'loud and clear' channel: the enemy."
Neo-conservative and administration efforts to
depict the "war on terrorism" that Bush launched after
the attacks of September 11, 2001, as a war against
"another totalitarian evil", as in the Cold War, have
been a "strategic mistake", according to the report.
"In stark contrast to the Cold War, the United
States today is not seeking to contain a threatening
state-empire, but rather seeking to convert a broad
movement within Islamic civilization to accept the value
structure of Western modernity - an agenda hidden within
the official rubric of a 'war on terrorism'.
"If
we really want to see the Muslim world as a whole and
the Arab-speaking world in particular move more toward
our understanding of 'moderation' and 'tolerance', we
must reassure Muslims that this does not mean they must
submit to the American way," argues the report.
To succeed, Washington must target those in the
Islamic world "who support, or are likely to support,
our views based on their own culture, traditions and
attitudes about such things as personal control, choice
and change," it adds.
"We believe the most
'movable' targets will be the so-called secularists of
the Muslim world: business people, scientists,
non-religious educators, politicians or public
administrators, musicians, artists, poets, writers,
journalists, actors and their audiences and admirers."
Key themes and messages that can persuade this
group to back US goals include: "respect for human
dignity and individual rights; individual education and
economic opportunity; and personal freedom, safety and
mobility," suggests the report, which also stresses
developing new techniques for reaching that audience,
including electronic mail, Internet chat rooms, video
games, and interactive Internet games.
More
traditional efforts, such as television broadcasts,
person-to-person exchanges, the enlistment of
celebrities in government public-diplomacy efforts,
should also be expanded by injecting hundreds of
millions of dollars into existing programs that have,
says the report, become "anemic" since the Cold War.
The president should also establish a new deputy
national security adviser for strategic communication
post in the White House, as well as a "strategic
communication committee" within the National Security
Council on which senior representatives from all
relevant agencies should serve, it proposes.
Congress should also establish a Center
for Strategic Communication modeled after the
National Endowment for Democracy that, among other things,
would act as a think-tank devising new programs, such as
a children's television series in Arabic, to communicate core
messages.
