Posted on 06/17/2003 8:03:39 PM PDT by Brian S
By ERIC SCHMITT
ASHINGTON, June 17 — The former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, assailed the State Department today as "a broken institution," and called on President Bush to overhaul the agency to promote democratic values more effectively in a world where anti-American sentiment was on the rise.
Mr. Gingrich's remarks to reporters today and in a coming article in Foreign Policy magazine were startling for their blunt criticism of an important part of a Republican administration and because they came nearly two months after White House officials rebuked Mr. Gingrich for similar comments he had made about the State Department as an attack on the president.
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Mr. Gingrich resigned as speaker of the House five years ago, but he remains an influential voice in the powerful neoconservative wing of the Republican Party that has criticized the State Department's positions on issues from the Middle East to North Korea. He is friends with Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and serves on the Defense Policy Board, an advisory panel.
While Mr. Gingrich sought to avoid personalizing his attack, it was hard not to take his remarks as an implicit criticism of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's stewardship. A spokesman for Mr. Powell, who is in Cambodia, said he had not seen the statements and had no immediate comment on them.
In an interview with a small group of reporters to promote his magazine article, Mr. Gingrich said today that the State Department was undercutting Mr. Bush's foreign policy goals by propping up dictators, coddling corrupt allies and failing to champion aggressively such American values as the rule of law, constitutional liberties and free elections.
"It's not the State Department's job to manage the world they find," Mr. Gingrich said. "It's the State Department's job to interact with the world in a manner which moves it closer to the kind of world America hopes for."
Mr. Gingrich offered several policy recommendations, like increasing the size of the Foreign Service by 40 percent and establishing a new White House office of global communication. He also called on the House and Senate to hold hearings on the subject, and urged Mr. Bush to present specific recommendations, perhaps drafted by a presidential task force, by the next State of the Union address in January.
"The State Department needs to experience culture shock, a top-to-bottom transformation that will make it a more effective communicator of U.S. values," Mr. Gingrich wrote in his article, given to reporters in advance.
There is no love lost between Mr. Gingrich and top State Department officials. After Mr. Gingrich issued a blistering critique of the State Department in a speech in April, the department fired back. Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage told USA Today at the time, "It's clear that Mr. Gingrich is off his meds and out of therapy."
Today, White House and State Department officials sought to play down Mr. Gingrich's latest eruption as an attention-grabbing scheme, declining to comment until they had studied his article and remarks more closely.
"I don't think anyone has taken the time to look at this, and I'm not sure anyone cares," said a State Department spokesman, Philip T. Reeker. "I don't think Gingrich has any particular standing around here."
Mr. Gingrich said today he had not provided an advance copy of his article to the Bush administration. When pressed, Mr. Gingrich called Mr. Powell "very smart and very capable," and said the secretary was "a magician" for winning administration and Congressional approval to increase the State Department's budget without making structural improvements.
Mr. Gingrich said the State Department had proved inept in developing an effective global communications strategy to counter skeptical allies and hostile countries, as well as state-run media like Al Jazeera.
"We should be financing Iraqis who have survived Saddam's torture camps, and Iraqis whose families were found buried in the mass graves to tour Europe and Asia to explain their personal experiences so that the depth of sickness of the Saddam dictatorship became an accepted fact," Mr. Gingrich told reporters.
Mr. Gingrich asserted that in an age of instantaneous global communications, the State Department needed to do a better job, through radio broadcasts, publications and student exchanges, of reaching the citizens of far-flung nations, not just their leaders.
"I believe in democracy, you better be able to communicate with lots of people, not just governments," he said.
This has always puzzled me. We need a real voice of america to explain liberty to the middle east and south america. If you've ever heard VOA today, its a lot like NPR. In trying to be even handed and acceptable to the sorts of people who think the BBC is great, they give full voice to anti- western and anti-US sentiment. And they play too much silly popular entertainment.
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