Karen Hughes' mission: Explaining America abroad
NEW YORK CITY —
It’s a tough, daunting and sometimes frustrating challenge — explaining America overseas, and particularly in the Middle East. The task is compounded not so much by hostility but by entrenched misperceptions which in turn are morphed into a kind of pseudo-reality. The problems are exacerbated by a contentious American presence in Iraq and a continuing political standoff with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Addressing a gathering at New York’s prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, Amb. Hughes stated, “During the Cold War we were trying to get information into societies that were largely closed, where people were hungry for that information. Well, today in places like the Middle East there's an information explosion and no one is hungry for information.” She added, “What we are competing for there is for attention and for credibility in a time when rumors can spark riots, and information, whether it's true or false, quickly spreads across the world, across the internet.”
The task for this pro-active Texan and Bush family confidante is as simple as it is daunting. Karen Hughes asserted, “the President gave me pretty clear marching orders. He said spreading the message of freedom requires an aggressive effort to share and communicate America's fundamental values. He noted the war against terrorism will not be won by force of arms alone but in the battle of ideas.”
The second strategic objective “is to isolate and marginalize the violent extremists and confront their ideology of tyranny and hate. We must undermine their efforts. They want to portray the West as in conflict with Islam. We have to undermine those by providing platforms for debate, by empowering mainstream voices and by demonstrating respect for Muslim cultures and contributions to our society and to world society.”
Speaking of Bin Laden’s fundamentalist jihadi radicals she stressed, “Theirs is a message of destruction and death, ours a message of life and opportunity. And more and more people, including more and more Muslims across our world, are speaking up and saying that.”
Her third point “is to foster a sense of common interests and common values between Americans and people of different countries and cultures across our world.”
The Ambassador stressed the need for additional foreign exchanges and underscored the Administration’s additional funding for them; up $70 million in the 2006 budget.
A particular point impressed me as one who is familiar with the blizzard of anti-American conspiracy campaigns which seem to flourish in many places. Namely to present a specific and targeted response to deflate the calumnious disinformation theories.
Hughes advised that the State Department has “in real time, a Rapid Response Unit where we watch what's being said on the pan-Arab stations, on media across the world. We monitor the blogs. And then we, every morning, produce a one-to-two page report so policymakers can read and absorb it quickly of what is driving news across the world and what is America's message, three or four points on each one of those news stories.”
But beyond information, the obvious is rarely gets mentioned such as massive American humanitarian assistance for the Pakistan earthquake relief or the Sudan crisis. She underscored America’s compassion, where in Darfur, home to two million displaced people, “more than 85 percent of the food aid has come from the United States of America.”
The task is daunting — leaving the Council speech, I overheard a European correspondent sarcastically railing against Hughes message, “this nonsense about America being a hope and supporter of democracy!” The writer arrogantly asserted, “Who are these people to think anybody in the world looks up to them?” Just down the street stands Hunter College, of the City University of New York, long known as the Ivy league for many immigrants. There one sees students from Bosnia, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Jordan, and Poland among others, studying to seek the American dream. There one also finds the practical application of what Amb. Hughes was talking about.
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense
issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com. |
