Here’s some shocking news: the U.S. has a bad image in the Muslim world, via the New York Times.
The United States must drastically increase and overhaul its public relations efforts to salvage its plummeting image among Muslims and Arabs abroad, a panel chosen by the Bush administration has found."Hostility toward America has reached shocking levels," the panel stated in its report, which will be released Wednesday. "What is required is not merely tactical adaptation but strategic, and radical, transformation."
The report added that "spin" and manipulative public relations "are not the answer," but that neither is avoiding the debate.
The advisory panel said that it recognized that American policies might well be the root of the problem, but that Washington could do far more to present its side of the issues and rebut widespread misinformation among Muslims overseas.
We agree with the panel that the root of the problem might very well indeed be the American policies themselves. What are we going to advertise to the Muslim world – that they should like us because we are the protectors of democracy? Bush’s arrogant behavior towards the rest of the world during the build-up to the Iraq campaign and continuing to the present has proven to the world that our commitment to democracy is casual at best. It’s a convenient way to couch our true intentions, which involve oil, American business interests and a conservative plan to oust Saddam Hussein that evolved long before Bush announced he would run for president.
Bush’s continuing swagger and outright hypocrisy cannot be explained away by catchy public relations slogans. What will change minds in the Muslim world and beyond is for the U.S. act as a partner instead of a bully, a builder instead of a protector of its own interests and anything other than an out of control occupation force.
