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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (468709)	10/1/2003 4:17:40 PM
From: Selectric II	Respond to of 769670

Access to that NYT link requires registration with THEM, which I wouldn't do even on a bad day.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (468709)	10/1/2003 10:34:08 PM
From: J_F_Shepard	Respond to of 769670

Just for you Selectric...the first page. Sorry I addressed this to myself... "U.S. Must Counteract Image in Muslim World, Panel Says By STEVEN R. WEISMAN Published: October 1, 2003 [W] ASHINGTON, Sept. 30 ? The United States must drastically increase and overhaul its public relations efforts to salvage its plummeting image among Muslims and Arabs abroad, a panel chosen by the Bush administration has found. "Hostility toward America has reached shocking levels," the panel stated in its report, which will be released Wednesday. "What is required is not merely tactical adaptation but strategic, and radical, transformation." The report added that "spin" and manipulative public relations "are not the answer," but that neither is avoiding the debate. A copy of the report was made available Tuesday to The New York Times . The panel warned that the war in Iraq and the intensified conflict in the Middle East had increased anger at the United States, and that people throughout the world were ignorant of or misinformed about American policies. "A process of unilateral disarmament in the weapons of advocacy over the last decade has contributed to widespread hostility toward Americans and left us vulnerable to lethal threats to our interests and our safety," said the panel, the United States Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World. Led by Edward P. Djerejian, an Arab specialist and former ambassador and White House spokesman, the panel spent several months surveying the American efforts to promote the United States' views to the world's 1.5 billion Muslims. Its 13 members, including academics, diplomats and writers, traveled to the Middle East, Asia and Europe. The committee found that the State Department spent about $600 million last year on its programs to advocate American policies, and $540 million more for the Voice of America and other broadcast networks. If the $100 million to expand economic aid in the Middle East is included, the report notes, the total is about three-tenths of a percent of the Defense Department budget. Examining those figures, however, the panel found that only $150 million of the "public diplomacy" budget was spent in Muslim-majority countries, and most of that went to exchange programs, overhead and salaries. The government spent only $25 million on "outreach programs" in the entire Arab and Muslim world. "To say that financial resources are inadequate to the task is a gross understatement," the report concludes. Senior State Department officials said that they were very pleased with the report and that they hoped it would pave the way for increased financing for these activities. The panel's recommendations ? including the establishment of a special White House coordinator for public relations efforts abroad ? come at a time when some American officials acknowledge that programs even in the last couple of years have been confused and fitful. The Bush administration, for example, started a program called "shared values" last year, a series of television commercials showing that Muslims in the United States lead lives of dignity and equal rights. The advertisements were suspended after several Arab countries refused to show them. Many in the administration were privately critical of the commercials, agreeing with Arab and Muslim spokesmen who said they were irrelevant to Muslim concerns about American policies toward Iraq and Israel. The advisory panel said that it recognized that American policies might well be the root of the problem, but that Washington could do far more to present its side of the issues and rebut widespread misinformation among Muslims overseas. In an interview, Mr. Djerejian, a former ambassador to Syria and Israel, pointed to the power of Arab satellite television, and the absence of American perspectives there. He said he was struck during a recent visit to Cairo when he saw a panel discussion on Al Arabiya television about the "Americanization" ? a code word for corruption ? of Islam. "It was their version of our saying that extremists have hijacked Islam," he said. "But during that whole two-hour program, there wasn't one person who could in any way convey the American context." Another panel delegate visited some of the worst slums in Casablanca, Morocco, Mr. Djerejian added. "She said it was your worst nightmare," he said of the delegate. "Those hovels all had no plumbing, but they all had satellite TV dishes. You know, Woody Allen said 90 percent of life is just showing up. In the Arab world, the United States just doesn't show up."