“If only they knew how nice we are they wouldn’t be so nasty.”
That, in a nutshell, was the theory behind the “public diplomacy”
campaign launched a while back by the State Department. The woman
who headed it (now gone) came from the advertising business. She
did what she knows best. She mounted a television campaign
featuring testimonials by various American Muslims, showing how
happy and accepted they are in the United States. These were
intended for showing throughout the Arab/Muslim world.
How well did the campaign work? Did Uncle Sam’s “image” improve
in that part of the world? SearchLogic.com helped us find out. We
were given the password to its unique computer search engine,
Militant Islam 2003. This consists of 75,000 — you read that
right, 75,000 — websites covering the activities and views of
radical Islamists. They may be a small minority of the world’s
Muslims, but they are vocal and very busy.
SearchLogic.com, a Boulder, Colorado company, developed the
search engine after the September 11, 2001 attacks. There are
sections on Jihad in Islam, Hot Spots, Islamist News Sources,
Militancy Sites and one devoted just to Iraq.
These are not your average cuddly Muslims next door. Jihad
Online for March 10 reports a statement issued by the al-Azhar
Islamic Research Complex in Cairo, to wit: “Insistence on waging a
war against Iraq is nothing but a beginning of a series of attacks
directed to the rest of the Arab world. This is evidenced by the
declaration of anti-Islamic forces to the effect that once Iraq is
subdued, the situation in the region will be rearranged in favor of
U.S. and Jewry interests.”
On the slickly-produced, magazine-like pages of The Islamist is
a long article titled “Struggle in Islam,” with this passage:
“America, being the only superpower, has found in Islam a new enemy
to occupy a post vacated by the former Communist bloc. Islam,
however, differs from communism, and Western powers realize that,
unlike communism, they cannot afford to directly engage Islam.
Communism was termed ‘the Evil Empire,’ but Western powers wish to
avoid using a similar strategy of direct collision with Islam.”
Another of its articles is headed “Manufacturing
Self-Sufficiency.” You expect it to be exhorting the citizens of
Muslim countries to strive to replace China as the world’s leading
makers of kitchen gadgets. But no, it is about something else:
“Allah has obligated that the Muslims be in a constant state of
preparation, with the aim of striking fear in the hearts of the
enemies of Islam. This would entail developing our own weapons and
the most advanced factories to facilitate the aim of
self-sufficiency.”
You would expect, of course, that the remnants of the Taliban
would be unmoved by the U.S. “public diplomacy” campaign, but you
would not expect them to have a professionally-designed and active
website after being dislodged from Afghanistan, but they do. It
even includes an al-Qaeda Jihad movie. Among other things, the site
notes, “Everyone knows the ‘War Against Terrorism’ is only against
Muslims.”
Ummah.com quotes from an interview given elsewhere by former
NATO commander General Wesley Clark, to the effect that Iraq poses
no direct threat to the U.S. It then posits this: “We can fairly
restate Bush’s declaration (about Iraq as a threat) as follows:
‘The U.S. must not allow Saddam Hussein to ever, ever threaten our
friend Isction.’”
Throughout a two-hour sampling of websites gathered by Militant
Islam 2003 one finds these consistent threads: self-pity; a mantle
of victimhood at the hands of the U.S.; obsession with Israel;
disdain for Muslims who reach an accommodation with the modern
(i.e. Western) world; a longing for a “pure” Islam which they
imagine once existed.
It is chilling stuff and demonstrates that we have much more to
do to change the equation than turn out feel-good television spots.
SearchLogic.com, which is an independent company, makes no comment
about the materials included in its engine. It simply presents
them. In doing so, it is rendering a real service, albeit a
commercial one. They charge several thousand dollars a year to
subscribers, which number several major news organizations and
universities.
Now that the TV campaign has gone with the wind, the “public
diplomacy” unit might try Take-a-Radical-Islamist-to-Lunch
Week.
