US and Arabs: Winning Hearts or Psychological Warfare?

Linda Heard
 
The Bush administration’s interest — some would say obsession — with the Mideast and the Gulf goes way beyond its stated objectives of ridding the region of regimes antipathetic to the US. According to a four-month investigation, written up by David Kaplan in US News, “Washington is plowing tens of millions of dollars into a campaign to influence” Muslim societies.

So as to achieve this goal, says the report, “the US government has embarked on a campaign of political warfare unmatched since the height of the Cold War” using teams specialized in military psychological-operations, covert CIA operatives, think tanks and US-funded media.

Washington’s strategy to influence the thinking of Muslims is encompassed in “Muslim World Outreach”, a grand plan supported by George Bush, which has been distributed to all arms of the American government.

It aims to disseminate American “values” concerning “democracy, women’s rights and tolerance” and promote the Western way of life so as to split radicals from moderates. At the same time the CIA undermines and discredits religious leaders and Islamist parties not on the same page.

In my view this is entirely the wrong strategy. While it is true that anti-Americanism is rife throughout the Muslim world, it isn’t so much due to people’s religious beliefs but because of America’s aggressive foreign policy, its ongoing occupations of Muslim countries and its glaring double standards when it comes to Israel-Palestine.

Furthermore, despite a UN report, written by Arab intellectuals indicating people in the region aren’t interested in reading, they are avid followers of print and television news and from a doorman to a doctor or lawyer, probably know more about local and international politics than most Westerners.

The fact is most Muslims have long realized US ambitions to alter their thinking and sway their beliefs, which has made them even more resentful and those beliefs more entrenched. Al-Hurra and Sawa, for all their superficial sophistication, are little more than jokes, while Arabs, in particular, still prefer to get their news from Al-Jazeera.

Not only that, those kinds of American policies are insulting. There are many Arabs, for example, ordinary folks not extremists, who dislike aspects of Western society, especially what they view as loose morals depicted in movies and music videos, and the cult of the individual eroding family ties.

Indeed, I have known many Arabs who have lived for most of their life in the US or Britain, that have returned “home” so as to provide a safe environment for their children away from alcohol, drugs and the mindless pop culture.

That is surely their prerogative but what if the Arab world banded together to pour millions of dollars into, say, “Western world outreach” to influence and infiltrate schools and churches with media outlets designed to change the very personas of their listeners and viewers using indoctrination techniques, perhaps even subliminal messages?

Can you imagine the outrage? Fox News anchors would have apoplexy, anti-Islamic preachers, such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson would be calling for a crusade, and even more importantly, ordinary Americans would set their faces against the region even as Arabs are doing now in the face of such psychological onslaughts.

As it happens, America is becoming more conservative with issues such as abortion, but if Muslims were to stand up wagging fingers, there would likely be a reverse backlash. There is no mystery about this. It is simply the way human nature works.

In truth, Washington’s policies have not only failed abysmally, they have made things worse. Prior to the US going on the rampage post-Sept. 11, most of the region’s youth looked up to America. Many aspired to emulating the so-called “American dream” and saw democracy as the way forward.

They weren’t threatened by the US but saw it as a guiding light for human rights and civil liberties. Indeed, from Cairo to Marrakesh, youngsters were asking how they could study, work or even immigrate to those shores, which symbolized prosperity and individual freedoms. Even traditionalist Iran was on the brink of a liberal revolution and sought to strengthen ties with the West.

Yes, they were disgruntled over America’s favoritism, putting Israelis before Palestinians but during Clinton’s watch, they saw the US as halfway to being an honest-broker.

Washington’s mistake was gross overreaction in response to the Sept. 11 attacks and as a result the American masses, then grossly uninformed as to the area, tended to lump together all Arabs and all Muslims branding them as extremists or even potential terrorists.

It seems to me that this thinking was promulgated by the US administration, whose neocon members needed a new enemy following the collapse of the Soviet Union able to unite the American people under the Stars and Stripes and smooth the implementation of their long drawn-up agenda.

The irony is this. Despite US efforts in fighting the so-called “war on terror” terrorists have multiplied as evidenced by a new Patterns of Global Terror report, which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sought to suppress, with the main victims of terrorism being Arabs themselves.

The report concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, when the first such terror report was published. So embarrassing is the report evidencing Bush’s failure that the State Department has decided to stop publishing it in future.

In short, rather than spend billions of American tax-payers’ money on policies which do not bring desired results, winning the region’s hearts and minds over time could be achieved far more simply and cheaply thus:

The US should seriously work toward “the road map” without bias and seek a nuclear-free Middle East, which includes Israel.

The US should set a timetable to withdraw its military from Iraq, leaving not one base behind and make reparations to the war’s many victims. It broke it but in over two years it hasn’t fixed it. At the same time, it should begin dismantling its bases in the Caspian and the Gulf.

And lastly, the US should quit meddling in the internal affairs of other nations, trying to mold the religions of others to suit itself, and stop threatening Syria and Iran.

Instead, it should reach out to those countries in a genuine spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation so as to aid them rejoin the community of nations.

It is only then that the nations in this region will accept America back into the fold with open arms.

Originally published on the Arab News website and reprinted with permission of the author.