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Jewish World Review Oct. 6, 2005 / 3 Tishrei, 5766 Pitching America, despite the boos By Max Boot
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
I feel Karen Hughes' pain. Really I do. On a "listening tour" of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey last week, the undersecretary of State for public diplomacy got an earful from interlocutors who weren't won over by her Texas-style attempts at folksiness, as when she introduced herself as just a "working mom." (Admittedly, it would have been more accurate to say that she just happens to be a pal of the working dad in the Oval Office.)
In Egypt, she met with university students, one of whom emerged to tell the Christian Science Monitor, "I didn't find her answers very convincing." In Saudi Arabia, she met with a roomful of women who denied that they were oppressed and claimed that they loved living in a state that bars them from driving and forces them to wear stifling head-to-toe abayas. And, in Turkey, she met with numerous critics of the Iraq war who told her that it was "never, ever" possible to "export democracy and freedom from one country to another," which would come as news to Germans, Indians or Afghanis.
Been there, done that.
Like many other policy wonks of all political persuasions, I've given a number of lectures abroad sponsored by the State Department. In fact, I'm hitting the stump again this week in Mexico. (If Mexican/American relations take a precipitous turn for the worse, you'll know why.) And wherever I've gone, I've hit my head against an almost impenetrable wall of envy, resentment and hostility toward the United States, a wall built for the most part out of pervasive ignorance and malevolent fantasy.
In Turkey, for instance, which I visited less than a year ago, I heard numerous questions along these lines: Why is the U.S. conspiring to create a Kurdish state? (Actually, the U.S. opposes Kurdish independence.) Why is the U.S. using chemical weapons in Fallouja? (Huh?) And why did the CIA place in power Turkey's Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan? (Far from being an American stooge, he has strained relations with Washington.)
Luckily, I have some experience in handling moonbat queries because I've spoken on numerous college campuses — the only places in the United States where savants such as Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore are taken as seriously as they are everywhere outside our borders. I have therefore tried to display some patience in explaining that, no, the CIA isn't responsible for the actions of every world leader, and, yes, the World Trade Center really was brought down by Muslims, not by the Israeli Mossad.
I realize that my answers usually cut no ice with pseudo-sophisticates who think that every explanation offered by the U.S. government for its actions is a cover for some deeper, darker purpose that can only be divined by multiple viewings of "Fahrenheit 9/11." A favorite trope is to assert that every U.S. military deployment is explained by the search for oil. When a Turkish student made this argument to me, I asked her how she could explain the presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo, all places with no known oil reserves. I never did hear her answer because, while I was speaking, she stormed out of the room in a theatrical display of disgust.
Most people, however, are too curious, too polite or simply too lazy to walk out. They stay, they listen — and they may actually hear something that causes them to rethink the anti-American drivel peddled by their press and politicos. Tours such as the one that Hughes undertook may not change many minds, but even if her message resonates with only one or two people in every auditorium, it was worth the attempt.
Or at least so I've convinced myself. Maybe I just don't want to admit that I'm wasting my time. But I really do think there is value in conversing with people who may not realize that their poisonous perceptions of the United States are based on flimsy foundations. Given the paucity of pro-American voices around the world, it's up to Americans to go out and make these arguments ourselves.
Unfortunately, the State Department has not traditionally been very interested in speaking to foreign societies; it prefers to communicate with foreign ministries. Hughes has made a good step forward by engaging with more or less regular folks. If she can make that the State Department's normal operating mode — a big if — she will have achieved something valuable, notwithstanding all the derision heaped on her maiden voyage.
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© 2005, Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate |
Arnold Ahlert | ||||||||||||
