The Herald Tribune (from the AP and The Boston Globe) on Friday carried a small story on yet another study conducted that concludes America’s “poor image in the Middle East continues to stymie the Bush Administration’s efforts to promote democracy in the region”. Duh.
This report, made public on Thursday, was prepared by a bipartisan foreign policy task force organized by the Council on Foreign Relations (headed by Madeleine Albright, who should know better) and Republican Congressman Vin Weber. I have no idea how much money they spent on this, but it took them ten months to come to their earth-shattering conclusion.
Although these kinds of reports and studies have been numerous since 9/11, and most have focused on one or other aspects of American initiatives in the region, it’s mind-boggling that the leadership in the United States continues to “study” the question of what’s wrong with 'brand America' in the Muslim world. President Bush prefers to think there’s no real problem; that the only people who hate us are those who hate our freedoms. (Osama bin Laden mocked that theory when he pointed out that he didn’t hate Sweden, which is arguably freer than America.) Colin Powell thought that using Madison Avenue techniques to “sell” America would work; after all, he pointed out, advertising made him buy Uncle Ben’s rice. Yes Colin, but you already liked rice. So what we got for a while was advertising: commercials of happy Muslims frolicking in the U.S. that virtually no Arab television station would run. And then nothing for a while as we bombed Iraq and nothing could counter images of dead Iraqi babies or armless boys in barely functioning hospitals. Now, of course, Karen Hughes is to be in charge of America’s image, although she hasn’t started her job at State yet (nor has she appointed any actual Muslims to her staff), which tells us what a big priority this all is for the Bush administration.
I know this will have no effect on congressmen or administration officials who want to spend some of the public’s money on finding out if the Muslim world hates us (and why), but here’s a quick cheat-sheet for those who’d like to save a buck:
1. Yes, they hate us. Not just the evil-doers, but all of them, including the intellectuals and the western educated, so no reason to ask the question anymore. But ‘us’ is not the American people, ‘us’ is the U.S. government, or more specifically, U.S. foreign policy. This has been pointed out many times in many different studies (as well as in the nation’s papers), so let’s just accept that this is true. The Arabs aren’t going to change their minds.
2. They don’t like our foreign policy and they don’t trust us for the following reasons:
a.) Our hypocrisy. We support despotic regimes if they’re our buddies and threaten ones that dare question our orders. We talk about human rights and freedom while we’re “rendering” suspects abroad for torture. And, no, Rummie, Guantanamo Bay’s Camp Delta doesn’t fit in with their idea of human rights.
b.) Our one-sided support for Israel. We might get at least some of the Muslims to respect us if we didn’t automatically veto every anti-Israel resolution at the U.N., no matter how just it might be, and if we demanded that Israel actually comply with the few resolutions that have passed, much in the same way we demand that Muslim states do.
3.) They don’t hate globalization or our cultural influence as much as we might think. Muslims like hamburgers (halal, of course), they like our technology (especially the weapons), and they even like our movies and music. They probably like all of the above more than the French do. But what they don’t like is our sex. They don’t want our cultural hegemony to include it, and they don’t think MTV videos are a good influence on their kids. They don’t hate the Swedes who like sex as much or more than we do because the Swedes don’t ram Swedish culture down their throats: many Muslims assume that American-style “freedom” brings American-style culture and American-style sex. Not with our daughters, please.
So if all of the above is true, what can we do about it? That’s for another post.