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 Winning
the Propaganda War
Finally Karen Hughes has a new strategy…
[by
Daniel Pipes] 12/29/05
It comes
as a relief to learn that Karen Hughes, who runs the public
diplomacy shop at the U.S. State Department, has suspended
the pathetic effort to reach out to Arab and other foreign
audiences via a taxpayer-funded magazine named Hi
International (best remembered for a notorious June
2005 article, "Sharp-Dressed Men," that told how "real
men moisturize").
It's startling
to realize that $4.5 million a year produced a mere 55,000
monthly copies of Hi and (according to alexa.com) a website that
ranks about 900,000th from the top, suggesting it
gets about 100 hits a day. The magazine has been an embarrassment
and a waste of money. (When did the war on terror become the
war on wrinkles?)
Contributor
Daniel Pipes
Daniel
Pipes is director of the Middle
East Forum, a member of the presidentially-appointed
board of the U.S.
Institute of Peace, and a prize-winning columnist
for the New York Sun and The Jerusalem
Post. His most recent book, Miniatures: Views
of Islamic and Middle Eastern Politics (Transaction
Publishers) appeared in late 2003. His website, DanielPipes.org,
the single most accessed source of information specifically
on the Middle East and Islam, offers an archive and
a chance to sign-up to receive his new materials as
they appear. [go to Pipes index]
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But even
had Hi been better conceived and executed, it and
to a lesser degree, such American government efforts as Radio
Sawa and Al-Hurra Television is misconceived. Like generals
fighting the last war, diplomats recall the
successes of Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe in providing
precious information to Soviet bloc peoples and thereby helping
to bring about the demise of the Soviet Union and its satellites.
Doing what they know worked once, they largely adopted the
same informational model for Hi, Sawa, and Al-Hurra.
But Muslims
generally and Islamists specifically do not lack for reliable
information; much less do they (as did Soviet-bloc populations)
prefer Western sources of information to their own. To the
contrary, many indications suggest Muslims favor tuning in
or reading reports prepared by their co-religionists, trusting
these more than what comes from non-Muslims.
The clearest
proof comes from Muslims living in Western countries (including
Israel) who are fluent in one or more Western languages. Enjoying
access to a huge array of television stations and Internet
sites, they generally get their news not from these but from
Muslim sources.
One sign
of this pattern is the intense effort by such television stations
as Al-Jazeera
(in Canada) or Al-Manar
(in France) to reach Muslim audiences; or Al-Jazeera's
plan to begin broadcasting
in English in early 2006. An even more compelling piece
of evidence comes from Islamist terrorists living in the West,
who practically block out non-Muslim sources of information.
For example,
consider the background to the March 1, 1994, assault by a
Lebanese immigrant, Rashid
Baz, against a Jewish boy, Ari Halberstam, on the Brooklyn
Bridge in New York. As Uriel Heilman recounts in the Middle
East Quarterly, Baz shot and murdered Halberstam four days
after an Israeli, Baruch Goldstein, killed 29 Muslims in a
mosque in Hebron. The Goldstein massacre prompted riots throughout
the Middle East and incensed Muslims in the United States,
who "interpreted the events unfolding in the Middle East very
differently from most of America."
Although
the Israeli government unstintingly condemned Goldstein's act,
the Arabic press "almost without exception" portrayed the massacre
as a responsibility of the Israeli people and government. It
broadcast the Palestinian representative telling the United
Nations that "the government of Israel is accountable for what
has taken place . . . and one can say it even participated
in the act." Islamist sources declared that "anybody or anything
remotely linked with Israel" was a legitimate target for revenge.
Baz lived
and breathed this interpretation: American broadcasts and newspapers
were irrelevant to him. Although he lived in the world press
capital, he inhabited a mental environment shaped by near and
distant Arabic-language editors. With an anger "fueled by reports
from Arabic sources that painted the killer Goldstein as an
agent of Israeli will, rather than as a deranged gunman acting
alone," he equipped himself with a small arsenal of weapons,
searched out a target related to Israel, found it in a van
full of Hasidic boys, and embarked on his murderous rampage.
Unlike the
Soviet bloc, the Muslim world lacks not access to reliable
information but interest in it. The reasons are many but perhaps
the most salient of them are a disposition
to believe in conspiracy theories and an attraction
to totalitarian solutions. Rather than try to purvey information
to Muslims, State (and its counterparts elsewhere) should instead
assert the case for liberal, secular, and humane values. More
than facts, the Muslim world needs to understand the basics
of what makes the West thrive and thereby be inspired to
emulate it. -one-
This article
first appeared at New York Sun
copyright
2005 Daniel Pipes
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