|
|
|
|
SPEAKING
FREELY
Bush and the Arab
street
By Maggie Mitchell Salem
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click here
if you are interested in
contributing.
Karen Hughes' Senate
confirmation hearing for the most thankless job in
the world - under secretary of public diplomacy at
the US Department of State - isn't scheduled for
quite some time. That's too bad. President George
W Bush could use a sturdy cheerleader-in-chief
right now.
After all, who else can
reassure him that despite the flushing of the
Koran (not the retracted Newsweek version, the
still-valid Humans Rights Watch account), despite
the first lady's picture-imperfect romp through
the Middle East, despite the resilience of Iraq's
insurgency and the fact Afghanistan is riding high
on a bumper crop of opium, well, yes, everything
really is going swimmingly.
As if that
weren't bad enough, positive ratings for the US
remain in the single digits in some Arab countries
- including staunch allies such as Jordan.
Jordan's Center for Strategic Studies
(CSS) commissioned a poll in five Arab countries
last year, the results of which were just
published in March. On key indicators, there is
good reason for Hughes' team to take notice.
CSS found that those Arabs surveyed hold
coherent notions of what constitute the values of
Western and Arab societies: the West is associated
with individual liberty and wealth, while their
own society is linked to religion and family. The
center also found that Arabs' perceptions of
Western societal and cultural values do not
determine their attitudes toward Western foreign
policies; respondents did not view religion as
exacerbating divisions between Arabs and the West.
If hostility toward the West, particularly
the US, has nothing to do with a "clash of
civilizations", then what fuels such widespread
antipathy?
Ah yes, that's right, the
policies.
According to CSS, Arabs disagree
fundamentally with US positions on issues such as
the definition of terrorism, the Arab-Israeli
conflict, and the war in Iraq.
Of course,
many in the Bush administration's ideological
inner sanctum scoff at the numbers. In his Weekly
Standard "memo" to Hughes, Robert Satloff
instructed her to "never read the polls". Satloff
is the executive director of the
think-tank-that-AIPAC (American Israel Public
Affairs Committee)-built, the Washington Institute
for Near East Policy.
All this becomes
fodder for back-page wars of words between pundits
of various ideological affiliations. That is,
until a senior American official, particularly in
this hyper-disciplined administration, makes clear
the prevailing viewpoint in the White House.
At the recent Third Annual World Economic
Forum on the Dead Sea, principal deputy assistant
secretary of state Liz Cheney made clear that the
Palestinian issue was not, as Arab League
secretary general Amre Moussa put it, the "sine
qua non" for peace and security in the region.
When Cheney accused Moussa of using the
Palestinian issue to stall on reform, and elicit
applause from the audience, the assembled elites
promptly booed her.
Houston, we have a
problem
During the same session, pollster
James Zogby, director of the Arab-American
Institute, indicated that the No 1 public concern
among Arabs he polled was improved employment,
followed by improved health care. The Palestinian
issue came in third.
The White House seeks
to isolate the first two concerns and deal with
the third as a separate and secondary issue.
Targeting stale political and economic systems for
reform is a welcome injection of energy - and
capital - but will never win "hearts and minds"
without a concomitant push for Israel to leave the
West Bank, not just Gaza.
In the past,
Arab leaders have manipulated the public's
sympathy for the Palestinians to mask their own
dismal records on civil liberties, prolonged
economic stagnation and political monopolies. The
mosque became a societal safety valve, releasing
internal tensions and frustration, while giving
rise to violent Islamists as well as constructive
conservatives.
So both Cheney and Moussa
are right - Arabs want more accountable,
reform-minded (however that may be defined)
governments that free people to prosper, whether
economically or politically; Arabs, Muslims in
general, feel deeply aggrieved that the
Palestinians remain, after more than 50 years,
stateless and with Washington seemingly passive in
the face of Israeli abuse, land grabs and colony
expansions.
Washington's dilemma is a near
pathological rejection of the root causes of
discontent with US policy in the region: lack of a
just settlement to the Palestinian demand for a
viable homeland and, in particular, the issue of
"right of return" for refugees.
Instead,
Washington rolls out a new phalanx of acronyms.
Last year it was MEFTA (Middle East Free
Trade Agreement), the year before MEPI (Middle
East Partnership Initiative) and now the
re-invigorated BMENA (Broader Middle East and
North Africa). They sound like characters from the
latest Star Wars movie, Revenge of the
Sith, perhaps bug-eyed barflies from a planet
that rhymes with Vrsac (Serbian towns sound
positively extra-terrestrial). The telltale "ME"
gives it away, of course, as an American endeavor.
These acronyms are well-known in elite,
regional economic and political circles, but lost
on 99.9% of America the way they are undoubtedly
lost on 99.9% of the Arab world - or more
specifically, the rough and tumble "street" that
Washington so desperately wants to win over.
Sadly, it would take dizzying spin to
sweep President Bush up from a deep trough of
global ambivalence to American motives.
According to a December 2004
GlobeScan/University of Maryland poll of 22,000
people in 21 countries conducted for the British
Broadcasting Corporation, less than half the
respondents in countries closely allied with the
US in Iraq - Britain, Italy, Australia - found
Washington's global influence to be "mainly
positive". In fact, Australia's 40% confidence
vote outpaced France by only 2%, less than the
margin of error. Despite Bush's presidential
"shout outs" while campaigning, only 52% of Poles
view American influence positively.
The
young, highly educated, well-heeled, and - no
surprise - Muslims were even less favorably
disposed to the US.
Still, despite a
surfeit of polling that is far more credible and
enduring than US-based Arab news station
al-Hurra's curiously composed Nielsen ratings, the
Bush administration's current approach to winning
"hearts and minds" seems to be almost comically
focused on "speaking slower and more loudly" and
not on saying something altogether different.
Veteran peacemaker Aaron Miller made it
clear just how to get back on track: "When we have
used our diplomacy wisely and functioned as
advocates and lawyers for both sides [Israeli and
Palestinian], we have succeeded."
In the
end, Palestine is the horse that must be hitched
to the reform cart. Otherwise, understandable
suspicions of American intentions will leave the
cart a roadside curiosity and not a vehicle for
dynamic change in the region.
Are you
listening, Karen Hughes?
Maggie
Mitchell Salem is a former special assistant
to US secretary of state Madeleine K Albright; a
former career foreign service officer; former
director of communications and outreach at the
Middle East Institute in Washington, DC; she now
provides Middle East analysis to private and
public sector clients in the US and the region,
including a number of dailies in Arabic and
English.
(Copyright 2005 Maggie
Mitchell Salem)
Speaking Freely is
an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Please click here
if you are interested in
contributing. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
|
|
|
