<<...The Bush team would also buy itself more support abroad if it made a more energetic effort to defuse the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mr. Bush has been great about telling the truth to Palestinians that they need a new leader, but he has been awful about telling the truth to Ariel Sharon that he needs to end settlements, and the whole world sees the hypocrisy...>>
Tone It Down a Notch
By Thomas L. Friedman
New York Times | Opinion
Wednesday, 2 October, 2002
It's hard to believe that just a year ago, in the wake of 9/11, the French newspaper Le Monde carried the headline "We are all Americans now." What a difference a year makes. Today, I figured, that headline would probably read: "We are all anti-Americans now." So I called Alain Frachon, the senior editor of Le Monde, and asked him how his paper was viewing America today. I was close. He said: "The same columnist who wrote that piece a year ago on 9/11 wrote another one this year on the first anniversary. This year, though, his headline was: 'We are all still Americans -- but not every day now.' "
What happened? Where did all that empathy go? Obviously, much of that initial burst of pro-Americanism was the world's gut reaction to the horror of 9/11, and when America soon started exercising its power to retaliate some of it was naturally going to dissipate. At the same time, because America today is so much more powerful, economically and militarily, than anyone else, it is always going to engender a certain amount of envy and animosity.
But while some will always dislike us for who we are, many now oppose us for what we do or say. And to the extent that we can neutralize some of that before we take on Iraq, we would be doing ourselves a world of good. What to do?
President Bush had the right impulse on this issue during the campaign, when he said America needed to be "humble -- proud and confident of our values, but humble." Unfortunately, his team has lost some of that humility. I loved Don Rumsfeld's briefings during the Afghan war. They were no-nonsense tough, with a dose of American nationalism that resonated with me. But lately I feel, coming from the Pentagon, a certain degree of imperial contempt for the rest of the world, especially the Arab-Muslim world. It's not healthy. I applaud Mr. Rumsfeld's slamming of Yasir Arafat, but when he refers to the "so-called occupied territories" he tells the entire Muslim world that America is utterly indifferent to Israeli settlements and how they have contributed to the current impasse.
I have long felt that 9/11 was perpetrated and applauded by people who feel envy toward America, or humiliated by its success and their failure at modernity. That doesn't mean we should coddle them. It means we should criticize them -- loudly -- and the regimes that produce them. But there are two kinds of critics in life: those who criticize you because they want you to fail and those who criticize you because they want you to succeed. And people can smell the difference a mile away. If you convey to people that you really want them to succeed, they will take any criticism you dish out. If you convey that you really hold them in contempt, you can tell them that the sun is shining and they won't listen to you.
There is too much criticism-with-contempt oozing from the Pentagon, which, unfortunately, has become the voice of America lately. It feels as if we don't have a rounded foreign policy anymore -- only a defense policy. I would like to hear more of Secretary of State Colin Powell's voice -- a voice that says America is not just about disarming rogues, although we will if we have to, but also about inviting others into our future. And it is too bad that Mr. Bush's instinctive humility has given way lately to Texas cowboy lingo when talking about Iraq. I'm sure it helps whip up crowds at Republican fund-raisers, but, as Mr. Frachon put it, "it doesn't cross the ocean well."
Beyond tone, there is also substance. We will never be taken seriously by the world if we go on telling others that they are either with us or against us in the war on terrorism -- but that in the war for a greener planet, in the war against global warming, sorry, we're not with you, we're taking a powder, because we don't want to give up our energy gluttony. President Bush promised that he would offer a credible alternative to the Kyoto treaty. Where is it?
The Bush team would also buy itself more support abroad if it made a more energetic effort to defuse the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mr. Bush has been great about telling the truth to Palestinians that they need a new leader, but he has been awful about telling the truth to Ariel Sharon that he needs to end settlements, and the whole world sees the hypocrisy.
Good will and popularity are underrated strategic assets. With a few small adjustments in tone or policy, we could buy so much more of both today. And if we launch a war to remake Iraq, we're going to want all the global good will we can get.
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