Phil Taylor's papers
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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE GWOT Year 4 - 2005
US image a tough sell in Mideast by Farah Stockman 
US image a tough sell in Mideast Effort fraught with setbacks By Farah Stockman, Boston Globe, October 23, 2005 WASHINGTON -- A major State Department charm offensive in the Muslim world has been fraught with missteps and mixed messages, according to experts on the Middle East and even some US government officials. Arabs complained bitterly when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a Senate panel Wednesday that terrorism ''has its roots in this very malignant water that is the Middle East." Karen Hughes, President Bush's new public diplomacy czar, faced tough crowds on her first trip to the Middle East last month. While she defended US policies during stops in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, she was met with angry questions about the Iraq war. On Friday, Hughes drew fire in Indonesia when she said that the Iraq war liberated the country from a dictator who ''gassed hundreds of thousands of his own people." She issued a correction hours later. Saddam Hussein is accused of gassing 5,000 Iraqi Kurds, although he is blamed for the deaths of about 300,000 victims, a State Department official later clarified. The mission to improve the US image in the Muslim world sustained another blow last week when an Australian television network aired video that showed US soldiers in Afghanistan apparently burning the remains of Taliban fighters. It was the latest in a string of abuse allegations against the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq. Opinion polls across the Muslim world suggest that favorability ratings of the United States have dropped into the single digits after the Iraq war, even in friendly countries like Egypt and Jordan, where the United States spends millions in aid. The Bush administration has devoted $670 million this year and unprecedented political heft to the public relations effort by appointing Hughes, one of Bush's closest advisers, as undersecretary for public diplomacy. Dina Powell, an Egyptian-American and former White House aide, is her deputy. But the effort is tripping on some of the Bush administration's own hawkish rhetoric designed for an American audience, according to critics of the campaign. ''We're stepping on ourselves every day," said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, a Washington-base nonpartisan political research group. ''The domestic message ends up trumping the public diplomacy message every time." Part of the problem may extend from messages the administration has sent about the Iraq war. After the conflict began in March 2003, State Department talking points intended for the foreign and domestic press highlighted different rationales for the invasion, according to a US official who closely monitors the US image abroad. ''For an American audience, you would say, 'We're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here,"' he said. ''The second point would be that we are trying to make the world the better place," he said, adding that the emphasis would be reversed for the foreign audience. But Internet and satellite television have made separate messages impossible. For instance, the State Department had to steer President Bush away from reiterating the phrase ''we fight them overseas so we don't have to fight them at home" after the US Embassy in Baghdad warned that it deeply angered Iraqis, who felt that it showed that Americans were insensitive to the violence that has overtaken Iraq, according to the US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. A search of a news-media database suggests that the ''fight them over there" argument emerged in print on March 2003 in a quote from conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. But a year later, Bush, Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney used it frequently in speeches to domestic audiences. Rice has often used the word ''malignant" to describe the political situation in the Middle East, including in a hard-hitting speech in Cairo that said the United States mistakenly ignored authoritarianism in the region for decades, contributing to an environment that allowed terrorism to thrive. But her phrasing Wednesday raised eyebrows among opinion-makers for the Middle East. ''It's a very bad choice of words," said George Hishmeh, a Washington-based columnist for Gulf News in Dubai and the Jordan Times in Amman,who said the negative description threatened to undermine the positive message that the Bush administration was trying to spread about the need for change in the region. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack did not back away from Rice's use of the phrase ''malignant water" to refer to the Middle East. ''I think it speaks to a truth," McCormack said. ''We're not trying to paint a broad brush here. But the fact of the matter is that the origins of this -- you know -- ideology of violent extremism . . . comes from a certain region." After Hughes' misstep in Indonesia on Friday, State Department officials shrugged off criticism, saying that she was responding to rapid-fire questions and showing her willingness to interact with often difficult audience members. But it's not the first time the envoy has been highlighted for misstating a fact to an overseas audience. The top public diplomacy role at the State Department has been plagued with problems for years. Advertising veteran Charlotte Beers held the job for 17 months after Sept. 11, 2001, during which time she was ridiculed often in the press for trying to market US policy as a ''brand" much as she promoted Uncle Ben's Rice and Head & Shoulders shampoo as an executive. Former ambassador Margaret Tutwiler, who succeeded Beers, left the job in a matter of months, and the post was left vacant for more than a year. Hughes, a communications strategist with no background as a diplomat, worked for Bush when he was governor of Texas and remains one of his closest confidants. She is considered so effective at getting out a message to the American people that Bush called her in to help in the final throes of his last presidential campaign. But Hughes has had little experience with the Middle East, or Islam. Her message to women in Turkey -- ''I'm a mom and I love kids" -- was not well received by an audience that focused instead on US foreign policy. Arab public opinion makers say her close relationship with Bush is her greatest strength -- not her ability to put a new face on the US image in the Muslim world. ''Both Rice and Karen Hughes have something in common," Hishmeh said. ''[Arabs] are hoping that because of their good connection to the president, they can influence his judgment. It's not about what they are telling Arabs." |