I posted the Rubin article. I'd agree he does a great job of arguing his thesis re. the source of anti-American sentiment. And the weak part of his piece is the last two short paragraphs at the end which address the "what to do" issue. Describing problems accurately is one thing. I guess devising effective responses is another tougher thing. Still seeing the problem accurately is vital.
I'd agree with your point that PR efforts are not synonomous with appeasement. And good PR certainly sounds like a great idea. But deciding to forswear military responses to rely on our supposed genius at PR would amount to appeasement IMO. Forswearing military responses is what we've generally been doing for decades. 9/11 was preceded by a couple decades of attacks against America and Americans. And we didn't respond to most of those attacks with "cruise missiles and armored divisions" and so on. I don't know if it's accurate to say a concern for PR in the Arab world is the only reason for that. But I think it's been part of it.
Our advertising industry is great at selling products and services. But our foreign relations are run by the government. Hard to see anything run by the government being as effective. Maybe we need to recruit more foreign service and government officials from Madison Avenue(?).
That is our challenge in the Middle East, in the long run: sell the product. We have to convince people that we are not the enemy, and that the radicals are, and that if they move in our direction they will have more of what they want. The nicest thing about this proposition, of course, is that it's true.
In the long run, our most effective weapons in this war will be television sets, not cruise missiles. If we can make them fear us, we may gain temporary peace. If we can make them want to shop at the Gap and listen to Britney Spears, we win.
While thinking about this, I recalled some things. OBL was a billionaires son, had vacationed England and Sweden in his youth, and partied in Lebanon as a young man. Zawahiri was an affluent Egyptian doctor. M. Atta had an advanced degree from a German university. The 911 hijackers had lived in
America for a long period before the attack, partying at strip clubs, taking trips to Las Vegas and the Phillipines, etc. prior to their attack.
These folks had long had at their fingers every thing the west has to offer and chose to give up their lives just to mount a symbolic attack against America. I also recall reading a WSJ article shortly after 911 about the reaction of Egyptian upper-class teenagers to 911. The article described them as seemingly pretty westernized - the article noted they hung out at the local McDonalds and listened to pop CD's - and those kids thought the 911 attack was a great thing and thought OBL was a hero.
I'm not so sure selling western products is the same thing as winning hearts and minds. Eating McDonalds and buying modern electrical and communications gear doesn't mean one buys into western ideas like equality of the sexes, cultural freedom, religious tolerance, equality under the law, free speech, free markets, democracy, and secular rationalism. How do we sell those things? I don't think they put them in the bag with the Big Macs. |
