"Hostility toward America has reached shocking levels." That
is the finding of a bipartisan Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy
in the Arab and Muslim World, appointed by President Bush in June. Now
the 13-member group has released an 81-page report entitled "Changing
Minds, Winning Peace."
The Commission sees an urgent need for increased funding to sell America's
values and policies more effectively to the rest of the world. "First
and foremost," the report states, "public diplomacy requires
a new strategic direction." What that entails, however, we are
not told.
Being appointed by the president, the Commission apparently did not
feel free to tell him that no amount of money and effort will reduce
the growing hostility toward America worldwide if his administration
continues to pour more oil on the fires burning in the Middle East.
Thousands of Arabs and Muslims, many of them now in leadership positions
in their native countries, have studied in America and remember the
freedoms and the generosity they encountered here. I know from nine
visits to Muslim countries over the past twenty years that the vast
majority of these people are not hostile toward Americans. All the more,
however, are they baffled and angered by the financial and political
support Congress and the President extend to Israel's oppressive and
bloody occupation of the Palestinian territories.
When President Bush assures Prime Minister Sharon that Israel has a
right to defend itself but fails to allow the same right to Arabs, even
America's traditional allies object. Since the Palestinians have no
military means to defend themselves against the killings and the destruction
perpetrated by Israeli troops, they use the only, most desperate defense
available to them: sacrificing their own lives to strike back. So did
the young Palestinian woman who senselessly bombed a restaurant in Haifa
to avenge the senseless killing of her brother in Jenin. To Arabs, the
Palestinian suicide bombers are freedom fighters.
The terror of the Israeli occupation breeds the terror of Palestinian
retaliation. Nobody believes that the mighty U.S. government is powerless
to impose upon the Sharon regime an equitable end to the Israeli occupation.
After all, the Bush administration had no qualms about imposing its
will upon the brutal rulers of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Every time the Sharon regime violates human rights and international
law, Muslims hold Israel's closest ally, the U.S. government, co-responsible.
That problem remains the root cause of the hostility Americans are facing
not only in the Middle East but also all over Europe and Asia.
Still, there are other sources of antagonism abroad: that the U. S.
withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, that it refused to
join the International Criminal Court, and that it declined to make
a counteroffer to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
Aside from its imprudent diplomacy, the Bush administration aggravates
its problems abroad with insensitive and arrogant rhetoric. President
Theodore Roosevelt had a principle that the present administration would
be wise to adopt: "Speak softly and carry a big stick."
Bush brusquely warned the world "America will implement its strategies
by organizing coalitions--as broad as practicable," rather than
rely on global conventions or institutions. When he wanted to invade
Iraq, he bluntly announced: "The United Nations Security Council
has not lived up to its responsibilities, so we will rise to ours."
Such unilateral pronouncements greatly differ from America's historical
role as peacemaker and organizer of international institutions. When
an American president tells the world that those who are not for us
are against us, he departs from one of our core values: the openness
to compromise.
In the coming weeks, the White House wants to change the minds of its
hostile critics with a propaganda campaign focusing upon what the president
considers the positive achievements of his foreign policy. Let's hope
it is not just a new spin on past exaggerations and mistakes.