[Dialogue] Selling an image Al-Ahram Weekly September 29, 2005

[Harry Wainwright]

Selling an image

By Salama A Salama

The US is selling its policy as one might a commercial product. It's the
form that matters, not the function. 

Karen Hughes, the US envoy to the Middle East and Muslim countries, clearly
hopes to patch up the US image. Her brief is to promote US policy as one
might any new consumer durable. She hopes to overcome the hostility Muslim
and Arab nations feel towards US policy -- a hostility that is on par with
that felt by the US towards Osama Bin Laden. 

This is not the first time America goes on a charm offensive. Since the
September 2001 attacks the US administration has been trying to win the
hearts and minds of the Arabs. Curiously, the US is hoping to get the media
on its side. Once the Arabs get the true picture of the US goals, goes the
thinking, they will become more sympathetic. This is why the US created
Radio Sawa and Al-Hurra TV. It has allocated $85 million to get such media
off the ground, in the hope of reversing the tide of resentment it faces in
the region, a tide that keeps rising the more Arab-owned satellite TV
stations tell their audience of US conspiracies and skewed policies. But you
can't stifle the truth with bias. Our public may have been sympathetic to
the human side of America, but even this is no longer true. What the US
should be doing is changing policy, not dressing it up to look better. We
may look gullible but we're not. The Americans should offer deeds, not
words. Even if Hughes has the sympathetic ear of our leaders the Arab public
will remain sceptical.

Tensions have grown tremendously in the region, and anger breeds violence,
just as resentment breeds terror. We have not seen the Americans lift a
finger to make the Gaza withdrawal part of the roadmap. We have not seen the
Americans do anything to ensure the creation of a Palestinian state. What
the Americans did was exactly the opposite. They supported Sharon in his bid
to exclude Hamas from the political equation, and the result was turmoil in
Gaza. The situation is hardly better in Iraq, where a civil war is brewing
and partition looms on the horizon.

In Lebanon the US has used the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik
Al-Hariri to isolate Syria, which it blames for the infiltration of
resistance fighters into Iraq. The US bid to overthrow the Syrian regime is
far from helpful. The Americans claim to be spreading democracy and freedom
in the region when what they are doing is spreading chaos. They are tearing
everything down so as to re-build it in a way that makes Israel happy.

This is the picture we see in the region. This is the picture etched in the
hearts and minds of Arabs and Muslims. We notice the harassment that
millions of Muslim Americans had to deal with. We notice the indefinite
detention of hundreds of suspects in Guantanamo. We notice the horrors
committed in Abu Ghraib. We notice things that no one -- not even Hughes --
can justify. 

C Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved

 

 

Peace,

Harry

 

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