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To: lorne who wrote (33120)	12/19/2003 6:26:09 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Dream on. America is losing the battle for Arab opinion Marc Lynch NYT Saturday, August 23, 2003 (This comment was adapted from an article that will appear in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs magazine.)http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=107401 Dialogue beats propaganda WILLIAMSTOWN, Massachusetts The hawks in the Bush administration think the key to understanding the Middle East is Osama bin Laden's observation that people flock to the "strong horse." The Bush team came into office determined to re-establish respect for U.S. power abroad, and has conquered two Muslim countries in as many years. Instead of sparking an outburst of pro-American activism and democratic reform, however, these actions have caused America's regional standing to sink to its lowest point ever. What went wrong? The speed with which anti-American hostility has recently emerged across all Arab social groups - including Westernized liberals - shows that the problem does not lie in enduring cultural differences or longstanding U.S. policies such as support for Israel or for local authoritarian leaders. Arabs blame specific Bush administration moves, such as the invasion of Iraq, and what they see as a one-sided approach to Israeli-Palestinian relations. But perhaps even more important is the crude, tone-deaf style in which those policies have been pursued. Ironically, for this administration above all others, taking Arab public opinion seriously cannot be considered a luxury. The Bush administration has argued persuasively that American security requires democratic reform in the Middle East. But the hawks badly misunderstand Arab public opinion, which threatens to undermine their efforts at achieving these goals. The hawks believe that Arabs respect power, not reason. They have nothing but contempt for the so-called Arab street, which they assume is easily manipulated by authoritarian states into anti-Americanism or anti-Zionism. They blame America's image problems on Islamic or Arab culture, on the envy of the successful by the weak and failed, or on simple misunderstanding of U.S. policy. Together, these assumptions have produced an approach that combines vigorous military interventions with a dismissal of local opposition to them, offset by occasional patronizing attempts to "get the American message out." Not surprisingly, the result has been to alienate the very people whose support the United States needs to succeed. To achieve its own goals, the Bush administration needs to abandon these assumptions in favor of a more nuanced understanding of Arab public opinion. It should open a direct dialogue with the Arab public intellectuals who have thrived within the region's increasingly influential transnational media. The target should be the many opinion leaders who share America's distaste for the status quo, but also fear and resent American power. Satellite television now brings Arab countries and their diaspora together into a remarkably coherent and ongoing public argument accessible to almost everyone. Articulate and assertive, combative and argumentative, this nascent Arab public sphere increasingly sets the course for the street and the palace alike. It is here that the battle of ideas is already being fought, and here that it must be won. The Bush administration recognized this after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, sending numerous representatives to the satellite television channel Al Jazeera. But its early enthusiasm gave way to fury over the network's coverage of Al Qaeda and Iraq. Its pressure on Al Jazeera to censor tapes of Osama bin Laden made a mockery of its free-speech rhetoric in Arab eyes. And Arab journalists were not inclined to take advice on objectivity from the United States, where broadcasters wear American flags on their lapels. Prevailing ideas for fixing the problem are likely to make them worse. The attempt to cow Arabs into submission ignores the fact that Arab and Islamist commentators already focus obsessively on the imbalance of power, and hardly need to be reminded of their weakness. All too often, U.S. public diplomacy attempts to crudely manipulate its audience, and misses the mark for that very reason. Information has gone in one direction; the target's views and thoughts have been of interest only in order to mold them. Nor is creating new, pro-American media outlets the answer. Radio Sawa won large audiences with its mix of American and Arab pop music, but it has done little to affect political attitudes. And a planned U.S.-$ sponsored Arabic satellite television station will have a difficult time finding a market, since any political content will automatically be discounted as propaganda and existing satellite stations already fill the demand for mainstream entertainment. The fiasco of American television broadcasting in Iraq should be a warning flag. The bottom line is that the new Arab news media, both broadcast and print, are more than a match for any alternative the United States might muster. Rather than shunning Al Jazeera and its counterparts out of pique, the United States should try to change the terms of debate in the Arab world by working through them and opening a genuine discussion. The goal of American policy should be to find ways to engage this kind of opinion and establish itself as an ally of the Arab public in its own demands for liberal reform, rather than making such reform an external imposition. The Bush administration needs to recognize that the elite Arab public can speak for itself. It deeply resents being ignored or condescended to. Only by treating Arabs and Muslims as equals, listening carefully and identifying points of convergence without minimizing points of disagreement, will a positive message get through. The most important item on the agenda must be Iraq, for what the United States does there over the next several months will have more impact on its relations with the Arab world than anything else. Restoring public order and erecting a functioning Iraqi state is vital, as is moving rapidly toward the inclusion of non-exile Iraqis in meaningful democratic governance. It should avoid overtly censoring the emerging Iraqi news media, and should back off its rhetorical attacks against the Arab satellite stations. All the while, the administration should explain what it is doing in these and other areas openly, clearly, and continuously in the Arab news media, making outreach there one of its highest priorities. America's current image problems in the Arab world are serious, but not fatal. An attempt at dialogue could go a long way toward easing Arabs' deep-seated anger over perceived American arrogance and hypocrisy and could address the corrosive skepticism about Washington's intentions, which colors attitudes toward virtually everything the United States does. In the long run, it might even prove the best way to nurture the very kinds of Arab liberalization that the Bush administration claims to seek. The writer is an assistant professor of political science at Williams College. This comment was adapted from an article that will appear in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune

To: lorne who wrote (33120)	12/19/2003 6:30:17 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Arabs to Bush: Mind your own Business By G.G. LaBELLE, Associated Press Writer siouxcityjournal.com CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Iran told President Bush to mind his own business Friday after he called for greater democracy in the region. Similar and equally caustic views were expressed by commentators across the region. While some commentators stressed that most people in the Middle East genuinely want democracy, Bush's preaching on freedom aroused resentment in a region where America is accused of waging war on Iraq and siding blindly with Israel against the Palestinians. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi condemned Bush's speech, delivered Thursday in Washington, as an "obvious interference in Iran's internal affairs," the country's Islamic Republic News Agency reported. "No individual, or group, has ever commissioned Mr. Bush to safeguard their rights ... and basically, keeping in mind the dark record of the United States in suppressing the democratic movements around the globe, he is not in a position to talk about such issues," Asefi was quoted as saying. Other Middle Eastern governments and few among the public had immediate reactions, since Bush's speech came Thursday night in the Middle East when Muslims were breaking their daytime fast in the holy month of Ramadan -- and on the eve of the main weekly Islamic day of prayer. But newspaper editorials and columnists across the region, while praising the merits of democracy, said Washington either couldn't or wouldn't help freedom flourish in the Arab world. "Arabs want democracy. They hate their corrupt regimes more than they hate the United States," wrote Abdul Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of the London-based Arabic daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi. "But," he added, "they are not going to listen attentively to the speech of the American president, first, because the consecutive American administrations, in the past 50 years, supported those regimes ... And because all true democracies in the world came as a result of internal struggle, not due to foreign intervention, particularly American." In its Friday edition, a signed editorial in the leading Lebanese daily An-Nahar described the speech as "very attractive words" but said that "before they become tangible policies that deal with the real problems, they will continue to be boring, empty rhetoric." "Exposing the region's ills is useless. We already know them ... What is required is a realization that the underlying problem continues to be Palestine and the obscene American bias for Israel and against Arabs, their interests and hopes," said the commentary by columnist Sahar Baasiri. Bush said in his speech that Western governments had been wrong for decades in backing undemocratic, corrupt leaders in the Middle East, and he renewed his criticism of Iran and Syria, both of which he has accused of fostering terrorism. Iran's state-run TV did not report the speech until Friday afternoon and gave no details on Bush's criticism of Iran. The one newspaper published Friday in Syria didn't cover Bush, though Syrians were able to see him live on the pan-Arab television network Al-Jazeera. In the capital Damascus, 37-year-old Syrian worker Ali Rida said Bush's talk of democracy didn't conceal the true U.S. policy in the region. "If they want to export democracy through wars, we do not want it," he said. Still, many Arab commentators said that despite the bitter comments, most people in the region understood at heart that Bush was right in saying Middle Eastern governments must lay aside their autocratic, old ways and join the modern world. Bush was careful to say that Middle Eastern democracy need not imitate America's system and praised some Arab governments -- all U.S. allies -- for taking small steps toward democracy. But Yemeni political analyst Mansour Hael disagreed with Bush's judgment on the region's fledgling democracy and said his speech wasn't even aimed at the Middle East but at an American public growing doubtful of Bush administration policies. "We in the Arab world have not experienced real democracy until today and our regimes and culture have not changed," he said. "The whole speech ... is a campaigning thing more than a reading of the Arab reality."