Of course assuming you're not a shill for the Bush administration, you already knew that. This piece by Sarah Chayes from Thursday is well worth reading. One basic point it contains is something many bloggers have noted this week. Given the poor behavoir that many Americans have shown, for which the president has held no one accountable, it's entirely reasonable for many people in that part of the world to simply assume such allegations are true. As she puts it:
On their own, the fatal beatings of probably innocent detainees and the use of religiously based sexual humiliation at the prison on the American base in Bagram would be sufficient pretext for troublemakers to provoke a riot, never mind the Newsweek report about desecration of the Koran.
While Americans keep doing these types of things for which no US officials are held accountable, and as long as the US and the Karzai regime it works with are allied with thugs, criminals, and multinational corporations that often seem not to have the people's best interests at heart, many people have every reason to doubt our statements and intentions.
But beyond that this story points out that there are foreign agents in Afghanistan (represenatives of Pakistan and Iran) who can easily use the deepening misgivings about the American presence to their advantage if they feel the need to do so. It's a deadly combination. And until we become more serious about certain types of reforms there the sad thing is that the bad behaviors that the Bush administration has ignored and/or encouraged are likely to result in many more deaths in the future. And while it's fair to criticize Mike Isikoff for certain things he's done in his career, those deaths won't be his fault.
Posted by armand at May 27, 2005 01:07 PM | TrackBack | Posted to International AffairsI think you are focusing on the trees, not the forest: why is it that all the PR the US gets in the Muslim world is negative? Why can't we generate any sort of pro-US vibe? The closest we came was during that week of the anti-Syria riots in Lebanon coupled with Egypts announcement that they would allow competative elections (though that's looking less and less "democratic" as time passes). But even that week wasn't a wave of people feeling good about what the US represents and does - just some events that made US actions seem less reprehensible. Why is it that the US - for all the good we do represent - can't get any good PR anywhere where it matters?
Posted by: baltar at May 27, 2005 03:34 PM | PERMALINKBaltar asks:
"Why can't we generate any sort of pro-US vibe? "
Dude, what sort of sleazy PR hack mindset are you operating under ?
Maybe if we came with Axe Body Spray samples instead of body bags.
Maybe if we were tossing out I-pods & gum instead of hand grenades?
Maybe if we were shooting Coca Cola commercials instead of depleted uranium ammunition at their citizens?
My theory is PR works for film openings, not democracies...
Hey I know,
Let's nominate Lizzie Grubman for the UN instead of Bolton!
Uh, I don't know what sort of "sleazy PR hack mindset" I have until you explain what a "sleazy PR hack mindset" is. Once I know that, I can tell you what kind I have.
On the substance, what's wrong with trying to combat the overwhelmingly negative Muslim-wide perception of the US? I'm not trying to defend the idiotic/awful things the US has done in the last few years, just arguing that we can achieve significantly more peace in the Mideast through dispelling the negative perceptions of the US than through any amount of bombs you want to drop. It's a fundamental part of any state's foreign policy, whether you like it or not. Obviously, having a good foriegn policy makes it easier to reduce how much the rest of the world hates you, but people in that part of the world have been hating us for longer than GW Bush has been running things. (Which, by the way, is an important part of the question I'm asking: why do they hate us even when we don't do idiotic things?)
I'm sorry I triggered a knee-jerk reaction in you, but you might want to think about the question some. It really is important.
Posted by: baltar at May 27, 2005 04:09 PM | PERMALINKAnd anyone who has watched Control Room could see that the view of the US on the ground is considerably more complex than most people in the US appreciate. The idea that "they hate us because of our freedom" is so wrong, partially because it obscures the real reasons, as well as the fact that many people can find lots of things about the US to praise. It seems a valid to consider 1) what are those things, 2) why can't we do more of those things and 3) why can't we let people know that we do those things (in addition to all the horrific stuff). We're hopelessly naive (not hacks) if we don't recognize that part of statecraft is communicating favorable information. The "marriage diplomacy" of the Medieval period practiced it, and diplomacy before and since has always involved some measure of what today we call "PR". For carrots (and sticks for that matter) to work, the intended targets have to know what they entail. Every government has professionals in its foreign ministry (or whatever it happens to be called) devoted to this. It's nothing new, and unlikely to go away.
Posted by: binky at May 27, 2005 04:19 PM | PERMALINK