Posted on 05/07/2002 7:59:22 PM PDT by anniegetyourgun
WASHINGTON -- Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's historic trip to Crawford, Texas, this week ought to provoke Americans to plumb some of the deeper reasons behind the yawning U.S./Saudi estrangement.
The "Arab street," according to every analyst here from the region, is increasingly anti-American. Their stories relate the skewed pictures most countries are getting about America -- from satellite-carried Israeli attacks on Palestinians to the often vulgar and sexually explicit American commercial TV programs sent around the world.
But when one searches for the failure of American influence in the Middle East, one does not have to look far. We are not telling our story. Since the early '90s, when America decided that the end of the Cold War meant "no war, no more" and that we had no more enemies, the United States has diminished, demeaned and destroyed its own public information capacity nearly to the point of nonexistence.
What days those were, from World War II to 1992 and '93! In addition to specially trained experts in every embassy for news coverage and personal influence, there were wondrous programs from America (ballets, jazz, symphony orchestras) that used to woo, wow and win the world on all kinds of complex levels. Today, there is virtually none of this. And the more the administration tells the world it intends to do anything it chooses -- alone, if necessary -- the more dangerously this vacuum inflates the hostility that is growing against us.
The implementation of the end of America's "public diplomacy," as all of these programs together tend to be called, came almost as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Immediately, moves were initiated to destroy Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, the two congressionally supported radio networks which, by broadcasting genuine news through the Iron Curtain, were instrumental in defeating communism. The radios were barely saved and now, once again, are invaluable.
By 1992 and '93, the Clinton administration was giving in to shortsighted far-right critics who wanted to destroy the United States Information Agency, and was bolstered by its own ennui. President Dwight D. Eisenhower created USIA as a separate agency in 1953 to spread America's story abroad. It was an institution of consequence, not some overnight fancy. And for 40 years, its officers, located in our embassies, did a superb job, explaining America to other cultures, manning the American libraries and making personal contacts that would become irreplaceable assets all across the globe.
But in 1999, after 46 brilliant years of work, USIA too fell to the naive post-Cold War fever. It was folded into the State Department, where it now languishes and laments.
That this act has been a failure of behemothian proportions, particularly in this new age of rabid Islamic fundamentalism, is little in question today.
Indeed, the USIA Alumni Association, backed up by respected former directors such as Henry Catto, Leonard Marx and Charles Wick, has, in a new campaign, begun to list what is wrong with the new setup: The lack of personal contact abroad in countries is a dismal development. Key audiences are no longer targeted. Most branch posts, libraries and information centers were downgraded or eliminated. The State Department's funding system is rigid, and monies are difficult to reprogram.
Even when there are public diplomacy officers in embassies, the command system from Washington is so diffuse that public diplomacy field officers cannot devise, implement and fund activities, and in fact spend 40 percent to 50 percent of their time fulfilling the super-bureaucratic administrative requirements of the State Department rather than, as before, working with key audiences.
The Alumni Association states in its reports the essential philosophical problem: "The cultures of State and public diplomacy frequently don't mesh -- reactive vs. proactive, information gathering vs. information dissemination. Traditional diplomats don't understand or appreciate what effective public diplomacy can achieve. Public diplomacy is a learned skill and not easily applied."
In short, between 1992 and 1999 -- exactly while the next war, with terrorism, was revealing itself, from the World Trade Center to the Khobar Towers to the U.S.S. Cole -- our leaders were busy destroying a remarkable institution that had served America with astounding success and that would be more necessary than ever in the years to come.
There are political elements in America who are waking up to what we have lost. Reps. Henry Hyde and Tom Lantos have asked the General Accounting Office to investigate why America can't state its case. There is a Hyde-Lantos bill in Congress that aims at strengthening and empowering public diplomacy elements. The Alumni Association is pressing to see a semi-independent public diplomacy agency created, such as USAID, or a similar independent entity.
Final note: When USIA and its responsible message were no longer out there, American commercial TV, with all the sensationalism and sexuality that offend so many conservative societies across the globe, came in and took "America's" place. Of course, this drove fundamentalists to be even more crazily anti-American! Do you think, if we really tried, we might find a lesson here?
And I see the author laments all this was effectively destroyed during the Clinton reign. Figures. Chalk another one up for the zipper boy...
If the Middle East is watching our TV sitcoms, surely they believe we're all pagan sex animals!
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