The limits of propaganda
Islam Will Replace Collapsing Amerikan Empire
By Anatol Lieven and David Chambers
February 13, 2006
THE CRUSHING VICTORY of Hamas in the Palestinian elections has starkly
revealed the bankruptcy of the Bush administration's strange strategy of
trying to democratize Arabs while ignoring their feelings and opinions.
Democracy is, obviously, representative. If the United States acts in ways
that the great majority of Arabs see as hostile to their interests, Arab
democracy will produce outcomes that are hostile to American interests.
One of the chief means by which democracy was supposed to be preached to
Arabs is the U.S. Arabic-language television station Al Hurra ("the Free
One") and its sister station, Radio Sawa ("Together"). Instead, these
government-funded stations represent everything that is wrong and
misconceived about official U.S. ways of approaching the Arab world.
Widespread Muslim fury at the European media's caricatures of the prophet
Muhammad, and widespread Western incomprehension of that fury, illustrate
the extent to which we are still talking past each other. Clearly there is
an urgent need for media that will bridge this gap. But to be effective,
they have to be credible with Muslims - which Al Hurra is not.
Still, President Bush has requested a 13% spending increase for Al Hurra.
Yet, according to a recent Zogby poll, only 1% of Arab viewers watch it as
their first choice. Al Hurra claims 21.3 million viewers, but it will not
publish the Nielsen survey that supposedly supports this figure. The station
is rightly regarded by most Arabs as a mouthpiece for the Bush
administration.
This is because Al Hurra's basic conception is wrong. As its name suggests,
it was modeled on U.S. stations like Radio Free Europe. These were founded
during the Cold War to counter Soviet communist propaganda and to spread
democratic ideas. They played a useful role in that struggle.
But in the Cold War, the U.S. was facing a hostile, totalitarian empire and
a monolithic media rigidly controlled by the Soviet Communist Party. The
situation in the Arab world is utterly different. Arabs may be oppressed by
their own governments, but with the exception of the Palestinians and some
Iraqis, they are not seeking liberation from alien domination. And their
media are now genuinely diverse. There are more than 200 competing satellite
television channels. The ones with serious news services do show deference
to their government sponsors - but then, these Arab governments themselves
have very different cultures, attitudes and policies.
As a consequence, Arab viewers now have access to a variety of views on
issues, including democracy, terrorism, religion, the role of women,
economic reform and relations with Iran. The most well-known Arabic
stations, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, have some genuine independence.
Because these stations opposed and strongly criticized the U.S. invasion of
Iraq, and have given prominence to negative stories about U.S. policies,
they and the Arab media in general have been treated as enemies by the Bush
administration, the U.S. media and many U.S. politicians.
If, however, these stations' attitudes toward our original enemies in the
"war on terror" - the perpetrators of 9/11 - are examined, the situation
looks very different. The executives and journalists of these stations know
what the Taliban and Al Qaeda did in Afghanistan - and what an Al Qaeda
regime would do to them personally. Most want democratic progress for their
countries.
These stations have broadcast Al Qaeda statements as news, but they also
have broadcast ferocious criticism of Al Qaeda's actions and ideology. And
they have suffered for this. Following criticisms of Al Arabiya by Islamist
insurgents, its Baghdad office was destroyed in a suicide bombing, killing
five of its staff.
The propaganda techniques of the Cold War made sense once. But such state
propaganda is not the real American way. Rather, our approach should be
based on Oliver Wendell Holmes' belief that "the best test of truth is the
power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the
market." The Arab media provide such a market. Let's compete in it with the
high-quality, independent media that the U.S. produces and Arabs respect. Al
Hurra should be closed down at once.
ANATOL LIEVEN is a fellow at the New America Foundation and author of
"America Right or Wrong." DAVID CHAMBERS specializes in Middle East
broadcasting and was a member of the White House Arts and Entertainment Task
Force.
http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/news2/latimes11v.htm
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