Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2001, page 11

Special Report

 

Despite Obstacles Foreign and Domestic, President Bush Still Can Win War of Words on Terrorism

 

By Delinda C. Hanley

“I have called our military into action to hunt down the members of the al-Qaeda organization who murdered innocent Americans. I gave fair warning to the government that harbors them in Afghanistan. The Taliban made a choice to continue hiding terrorists, and now they’re paying a price...

Throughout this battle, we adhere to our values. Unlike our enemy, we respect life. We do not target innocent civilians.”

—President George W. Bush’s speech on homeland security delivered in Atlanta, Nov. 8, 2001

Half a world away the United States is fighting two wars—a military operation as well as a public relations campaign. The daunting mission of the first is to punish the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attack on America and to root out future acts of terrorism. Initially President George W. Bush enjoyed great international and domestic support for this mission. As talk of a wider war began to increase, however, some of his staunchest supporters began to get nervous.

Many governments around the world support the administration’s view that intense air attacks are necessary to destroy Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist network and topple the repressive Taliban government, which bans radio and TV as well as education and work for women. Hunting down Bin Laden and bombing Taliban positions in the mountains of Afghanistan without killing innocent civilians is a challenge, even for an army with the latest high-tech weapons.

The second war America must wage, however, makes the first look like a cakewalk. Along with the military engagement, a propaganda war must be waged in order to maintain worldwide support for America’s war on terrorism. Unfortunately, before it even got started this war of words faced several obstacles, both foreign and domestic.

The first problem is that Washington’s war of words started with too little, too late. With few resources in place, it is difficult to compete with the message emanating from Al-Jazeera and other Arab media outlets. The second, and continuing, problem is Israel’s consistent undermining of American attempts to build an anti-terrorism coalition in the Middle East. Lastly, the U.S. media, Congress, and even some members of Bush’s administration seem to want to wage on Tel Aviv’s behalf a wider war against any Islamic or Middle Eastern country that opposes Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Even with these difficulties, however, it is still possible for Bush to win America’s public relations war on terrorism.

 

The American message isn’t getting through to the streets of the Muslim world.

In the last week of October, three weeks after the bombing campaign began, the administration belatedly launched what is sure to be an uphill battle for Islamic public opinion. In addition to getting off to a slow start, the U.S. is ill equipped to handle a propaganda war, because the tools it needs have been smothered in the bureaucracy. During the Clinton administration the United States Information Agency, the principal agency for telling America’s story abroad, was subjected to a series of budget cuts and finally was folded into the State Department. As a result, public diplomacy—once handled by a cohesive team of professionals—has been dispersed within the under-funded State Department and downgraded in importance. According to a Nov. 4 Washington Post article by David S. Broder, this has “muzzled America’s voice and restricted our ability to rebut the claims that this is a warlike, intolerant country.”

The Bush administration now is trying to beef up the Voice of America, which also suffered from cutbacks in recent years, in hopes of doubling its Arabic short-wave programming from its current 9 hours a day to 18 hours daily. VOA has asked for a 2002 budget increase of $30 million to launch the Middle East Network, a 24-hour service on FM and AM frequencies aimed at attracting younger listeners.

Also damaging is the shrinkage in funding for programs that bring promising young people and prospective leaders to this country as students or visitors so they can gain first-hand knowledge about the United States. Only 5 percent of the foreign students in this country come from Arab countries. Since Sept. 11, moreover, many of them, fearing an anti-Muslim and anti-Arab backlash, have transferred to schools abroad.

In the battle to win the hearts and minds of Afghans as well as the world’s one billion Muslims, Bush also launched America’s Fund for Afghan Children, and encouraged every U.S. school child to donate $1. As of Nov. 7, American children have contributed $1.4 million to the fund. The U.S. also has dropped food packets, medicine, pamphlets, transistor radios tuned to American news, and Arabic translations of President Bush’s Oct. 7 speech announcing the commencement of air strikes. Emphasizing that the U.S. is trying to avoid civilian casualties and is not at war with the Afghan people, administration officials have denounced the Taliban’s “inflated” casualty counts.

 

Al-Jazeera’s Influence

The American message isn’t getting through to the men and women in the streets of the Muslim world, however. One reason is that the Taliban regime, which shocked the world earlier this year when it destroyed ancient Buddhist statues, has proven to be highly skilled at waging a modern media battle. It has neatly used Muslim and Arab media outlets, especially Al-Jazeera TV, the widely watched Arabic news station based in Qatar, to corner Arab sympathy for Afghanistan and undermine Bush’s war on terrorism.

The five-year-old Al-Jazeera, which means “island” in Arabic and refers to the Arabian peninsula, is a lively pan-Arab satellite television station with 35 million viewers in living rooms and coffee shops throughout the Middle East, Europe and America. One of its fans, Dr. Hisham Sharabi, founder of the Jerusalem Fund in Washington, DC, says that when he turns on Al-Jazeera it makes him proud of his Arab heritage.

Al-Jazeera’s sheer professionalism is a breakthrough in TV for the region. Its use of impeccable Arabic, simultaneous translations, dramatic music and photography, and men working together with women, says Dr. Sharabi, “is showing the whole world that we [Arabs] are capable of running a BBC and better quality news station. It is transforming the Arab world.”

Because Al-Jazeera reaches the common man, Sharabi wonders what will happen when the multitudes who cannot read or write well suddenly are exposed to all this information. He predicts they will increasingly enter into the political debate when they can see Israeli attacks on Palestinians and the daily bombardment of Afghanistan, a poverty-stricken country that has been devastated by war for more than two decades.

TV audiences are moved by powerful images of bombed homes, senior citizens’ facilities and schools, and heart-wrenching scenes of wounded Afghan children. As viewers come face-to-face in their living rooms each night with the civilian victims, their support for America’s war on terrorism will continue to wane.

According to an article in the Oct. 15 Christian Science Monitor, the 24-hour satellite news station “is playing a pivotal role in shaping public perceptions of the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan.” Al-Jazeera is the only television news station permitted to have reporters in Taliban-controlled areas. Osama Bin Laden also sends prerecorded video statements and faxed press releases exclusively to Al-Jazeera. As a result, the station is facing harsh criticism—similar to complaints hurled at Cable News Network (CNN) during the Gulf war, which held similar exclusive status in Baghdad, and was accused of being a mouthpiece for Saddam Hussain.

During the October visit to Washington, DC of the emir of Qatar, one of the world’s smallest countries, Secretary of State Colin Powell asked Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani to rein in the station that has put his proud nation on the map. Ironically, the U.S., which usually extols the virtues of a free press, found itself criticizing the Arabic station with a reputation for the most honest reporting, candid discussion, and bold free speech in the region. “We want to see balanced and responsible coverage,” maintained a U.S. official, insisting that the Bush administration had no intention of curtailing freedom of the press.

In the spirit of the network’s motto—“The opinion, and the other opinion”—officials at Al-Jazeera offered airtime for a response to Bin Laden. Accepting the offer, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard B. Myers, and Christopher W. S. Ross, a fluent Arabic speaker and former ambassador to Syria and Algeria, all have appeared on the station.

The fact is, however, that it is difficult for talking heads to counteracttelevision images that the entire world, with the exception of the U.S., sees on the nightly news. Thousands of words from U.S. officials can’t clear up misunderstandings and anti-American feelings when the world suspects that Washington’s domestically driven Middle East policy is hurting civilians.

 

Sharon Takes Advantage

This brings us to the second difficulty the U.S. faces in its propaganda war. Much of the Arab world isn’t buying America’s conciliatory message because, in addition to the horrors of war unfolding in Afghanistan, an enraged Muslim population has watched Israeli tanks re-invading the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon used the cover of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack to wage his own battle against Palestinians, ignoring his American benefactor’s repeated calls for an immediate withdrawal and taking his own sweet time.

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa warned Washington on Oct. 24 that it will be difficult to win over Arabs and Muslims who can see in their news the effects of America’s unconditional support for Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians. The Arab world knows that the world’s only remaining super power has vetoed U.N. resolutions against Israel—including one calling for international observers—even as it uses punishing sanctions that harm the Iraqi people and strengthen their leader. The obvious conclusion is that America is oblivious to Arab suffering.

There is, however, an equally obvious solution to winning the public relations battle: the United States must do the right thing by the Palestinians and support a Palestinian state. In this President Bush has taken the first step. The next step is to demand Israel’s compliance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 242’s land-for-peace formula and withhold Israel’s annual $3 billion subsidy until it complies. If the U.S. pressures Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders, encourages the evacuation of illegal settlements and pushes a plan for sharing Jerusalem and the return or compensation for Palestinian refugees, America would see Arab resentment transformed into goodwill virtually overnight.

President Bush would be the sweetheart of the Muslim world, with streets named after him in every Arab state. As Jordan’s King Abdullah II warned State Department officials, however, unless Washington pushes hard for a lasting peace it will be difficult to bring Arab and Muslim nations into the anti-terror coalition.

Which leads to the final hurdle in the race to sell the war on terrorism to the Arab public. This battle also involves Israel and its American supporters. Israel-firsters like Richard Perle, head of the Defense Policy Board, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, an undersecretary of defense, and others in the media, Congress and American Jewish leadership continue to advocate the expansion of the war on terrorism. They are pushing to squeeze regimes in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan and Lebanon after the Taliban in Afghanistan have been defeated. A war pitting America against any Muslim country Israel opposes will bring precisely the clash of civilizations that Osama bin Laden has been doing his best to ignite.

According to an article in the Oct. 12 issue of Forward, Israel’s American supporters will continue to press for the goals Israel has identified as crucial, “including broadening the enemies list to include Palestinian groups, limiting the administration’s outreach to Syria and Iran and opposing administration efforts to win Israeli concessions toward the Palestinians.”

Commenting on Washington’s attempts to woo Arab moderates, Israel’s supporters went on to accuse the administration of “mistreating Israel, coddling terrorist states and muddying the anti-terrorism message.”

The accusations prompted countercharges from the administration that Tel Aviv was impeding the U.S. war effort.

Israel, however, may be overreaching in trying to impose a litmus test for America’s allies in the war on terrorism.

By November, America’s media had ceased much of its feel-good reporting on Muslims and Arabs in America that sought to counter any backlash to the Sept. 11 attacks. Instead of focusing on the Taliban in Afghanistan, Israel-firsters set about attacking Iraq and Syria, as well as the pro-American governments in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Journalist Georgie Anne Geyer, in her no-holds-barred Oct. 26 Chicago Tribune article (see this issue’s “Other Voices” supplement), described the no longer covert Israel-first plan as espoused in think tanks, Congress and in daily meetings in the nation’s capital: “This bitter attack on Egypt and Saudi Arabia,” Geyer observed, “seeks to discredit both, partly to discount the idea that the Palestinian conflict plays a core role in terrorism against America, and also partly to diminish, or ruin, the United States’ relations with any Arab states.

“Usually the attacks take the form of criticizing Egypt and Saudi Arabia for not taking a more active role in supporting the United States,” Geyer pointed out. “Much of the pro-Israeli part of the campaign is directed at proving that this fall’s terrorism was instigated not by ‘Arab street hatred’ over the war in Israel and Palestine, but by ‘unrepresentative’ and ‘oppressive’ Arab governments… It’s the old story, that Israel simply can’t bear to see any Arab countries close to the United States.”

Just as international pressure mounts for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians, then, Israel has launched a major effort to disrupt the global coalition against terrorism. Sharon and his U.S. supporters have attempted to shift the spotlight to certain “repressive Arab regimes” and leaders, including Chairman Yasser Arafat (“Israel’s Osama bin Laden”). They also demanded that the administration lump Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah together with al-Qaeda.

The New York Times published scathing editorial attacks on the Saudis, including Thomas Friedman’s Oct. 30 “Drilling for Tolerance.” On the same day The Washington Post— just in time to embarrass a visiting Egyptian media delegation—lambasted Egypt and other U.S. allies for encouraging Islamic extremism in their media.

In reaction to the sudden spate of anti-Saudi articles, Crown Prince Abdullah, who has taken responsiblity for running much of the day-to-day affairs of the Kingdom after his brother, King Fahd, suffered a stroke, said in a recent speech, “The ferocious campaign by the Western media against the Kingdom is only an expression of its hatred toward the Islamic system,” according to the Arab News, an English-language daily.

The Bush administration contradicted press allegations that Riyadh’s anti-terrorist effort is lukewarm, citing the vital contributions of a sophisticated operations center at Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh.

In fact, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Arab countries have a big stake in helping root out terrorism. According to Saudi foreign policy adviser Adel al-Jubeir, it is ludicrous to imagine that Riyadh would not want to use every available weapon against al-Qaeda. Bin Laden’s hatred of the U.S., he pointed out, pales beside his hatred of the Saudi government. “These guys are out to get us, not you,” al-Jubeir explained.

Why do Israel and its U.S. lobby, as well as its supporters in the press and on Capitol Hill, repeatedly seek to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its old friends in the Middle East?

Bush has drawn a line in the sand by threatening action against any nation that harbors global terrorists. Israel is trying to smear that line. If Israel and its supporters continue to undercut U.S. coalition-building efforts at every turn, Bush could find himself locked into a holy war. The stakes are high in this war of words on terrorism. If the Bush administration supports peace with justice in Israel and Palestine, however, we’ll all win.

Delinda C. Hanley is the news editor of the Washington Report.

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