The
US is hated around the world not for what we do but for what we are
portrayed as wanting to do.
We therefore have to change not what we do
or how we do it, but rather the mechanisms which portray us in this way.
In the past, there have been ideological disagreements based on true issues of difference between countries or systems, as perhaps was the case between the Communist and Capitalist blocs before the fall of Communism, where often Communists and Capitalists would be against the stated government policy of each other's system. Within that context, if the USA was viewed as the champion of Capitalism, there could be a legitimate 'anti-Americanism' based on policy rather than prejudice (though of course the capitalism that the USA championed may not necessarily have been accurately presented in Communist countries, and vice versa). However in many cases today, reasons offered for being anti-American are considered spurious by most Americans: for example many people today are anti-American because they believe the US is engaged in a crusade against Islam as an act of policy (perhaps deriving from the USA's Christian roots), whereas this is neither the stated policy of the US nor is it considered by most Americans to be so, or to be a desireable policy. As another example, some people are anti-American because they believe it is official American policy to subjugate Iraq in order to steal its oil whereas most Americans do not believe this is the goal of the Iraq war. To some degree - perhaps to an unusual degree - anti-Americanism is therefore due to what people are told about US policies and actions, and their resulting perceptions and beliefs about US policies and actions, rather than due to the relevant policies and actions as seen by most Americans. It is also interesting that many people who are anti-American also wish at some point to emigrate to the USA. It is therefore useful to distinguish between 'anti-American' and 'anti American-policy', as well as between being against actual official US policy, being against what is erroneously believed to be offical US policy, or what is believed to be a secret undeclared official US policy, and being against the unintended negative results of official US policy
The anti-US propaganda mechanism - centered in the Moslem/Arab
world and partially in Europe - invovles a combination of political
leaders, religious leaders, media companies and personnel, and
‘intellectuals’. What they purvey is a collection of
conspiracy theories.
People in the Moslem/Arab Middle East have no other access to opinion.
[What they hear has some credibility because the same views are
promoted by a small minority of Americans, however no one will change
the opinions of these Americans, nor should the government be involved
in propaganda directed against US citizens.] In any country there will
always be some who are conspiracy believers, but we have to change the
percentages so that only the extremists in any country believe them.
The further one gets culturally/geographically from the US, the easier
it is to believe these conspiracy theories: they are believed only by a
few in the US, believed by half the Europeans and by virtually all
Moslem Arabs in the Middle East:
· we're in Iraq to steal their oil (I hear this all the time from radical Democrats and Europeans);
· we are in a crusade against Islam (some
radical African American groups and some extreme US Moslem
groups: they also believe the Mossad ‘did’ the world trade
center);
· Abu Ghraib is a reflection of Bush's policy (seemingly hinted at by one of your callers today);
· it's all a plot by US industrial interests (Halliburton/Cheney etc: I hear this all the time);
· US policy constitutes terror as bad as Bin Laden's (Chomsky etc)
· We are constantly wantonly killing innocent
Iraqi civilians; it is our policy to humiliate Iraq and other Moslem
countries.
· Just as the US does in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Israel wantonly kills innocent Palestinians by the thousands, just
because they are Moslems/Arabs, as policy; Israel creates walls to
starve the Palestinians, and roadblocks to humiliate them, these are
not security measures they are deliberate acts of terror against
Palestinians, just like the US actions in Iraq; and the US supports
Israel in all this because they share the same goal: a Jewish-Christian
crusade against Islam.
These are all untrue. But as long as people believe that our bombing of
terrorists are actions against Islam, they will be motivated to
volunteer as terrorists and we won’t be able to defeat terror
(and eventual nuclear terror) just by killing terrorists. We of course
have to continue our war against terrorists everywhere, but it has to
be coupled with a policy of regime change in specific regions and
information change everywhere abroad.
We have to find ways to get our message across. The US conducted regime
change in France, Germany, Italy, Japan and elsewhere, and these
populations are better off for it, glad it happened, it is not a mark
against their pride that the US helped them in this way, nor was it in
order to steal their resources or humiliate them.
And there is hope: for example: A free government in Afghanistan and
Iraq will be a start in their own countries, when people there will
begin to see the difference between what they were told previously, and
the truth. They will see the sympathetic way in which the Arab media,
intellectual and religious leaders portrayed the terrorists who
enslaved Afghanistan, and how they portray those Iraqis dedicated to
preventing Iraq from being a free country. And eventually satellite TV
stations in Afghanistan and Iraq can begin to bring a more balanced
perspective to the rest of the ‘greater middle east’. But
in the meantime we need to concentrate resources on explaining US
goals, and showing how our actions are indeed directed towards
fulfilling these goals rather than the goals attributed to us.
The bottom line is: our policy is good, our actions are good, but we
can’t win as long as the collective enemy can manipulate their
masses - who they control and want to continue to control - into
thinking the US is fighting a war against THEM, the people and their
beliefs.
..............
re Israel
As a kippa-wearer I have often encountered verbal and physical
antisemitism in growing up in Canada and here in NY where I currently
reside, and have felt that if there are American citizens living in NY
City who are convinced that their fellow Jewish residents of their own
city were behind the 9/11 attacks on the WTC then there is little
likelihood of convincing Muslims living far away that this is not true.
We are continuously informed that the reason we are hated is due to
mistreatment of Palestinians. The enmity of the Palestinians has
absolutely nothing to do with humiliation and other mistreatment; it
would certaibly be aggravated if there wer eindeed mistreatment, but
even without it they would be fighting us just the same. Making this
connection is similar to the ‘logic’ of Hamas statements
after each ‘targeted elimination’/assasination of one of
their terrorists to the effect that they will send more terrorists
‘in revenge’ as though otherwise they would not have done
so. The eliminations are justified or unjustified actions taken to
prevent such attacks, and not the reverse (the attacks are not
responses to the eliminations); similarly the actions of the army and
often of the settlers, whether justified or not, are not the cause of
the enmity and terrorism, but are justified or unjustified responses to
it. The hatres is not ‘because’ of it. And, their hatred is
not because of actual events as depicted for example on Israeli media
reports, but is based on the biased and twisted versions presented by
Arab and Muslim media, and in some local US newspapers for certain
ethnic or minorit groups.
I spent several years Israel and my TV managed to catch some Syrian and
Palestinian TV ‘documentaries’ about Israel; they were
filled with vicious lies and even occasional false ‘clips’
of soldiers shooting Palestinian civilians en mass like SS troopers in
occupied Europe. The Palestinians are constantly claiming that all the
settlers and the army are shooting civilians deliberately and
systematically, continuously. They are called Nazis. The image of the
situation in the minds of the listeners is identical to what they are
told of the Holocausst, and this is of course deliberate. No wonder
they hate us. They are not told the truth. Based on the lies they
fabricate and the distorted images they provide of the conflict, the
various media outlets, TV stations and local newspapers government and
private are inciting cetain populations in the US, Palestinians in the
territories, as well as Muslims worldwide, to hatred of Israel. Any
normal caring person would hate Israel and want it destroyed, and
perhaps support terror against it if they believed this propaganda.
If anti-Israel people in the US and Europe, and Palestinians,
world Muslims and Arabs read Ha'aretz (A liberal Israeli newspaper)
every day, and trusted its reporting, would they think that the actual
actions of the Israel is the root of the problem? Would they
hateIsrael/the US? I believe not. They would realize that they could
make peace with Israel/the US easily and we would take care of the
issues: the problem is not the issues but the hate-propaganda. The
antisemites blend Jews and Israelis, create lies about both, and hate
us all, settlers and kibbutzniks alike, and fabricate lies about both.
Would those who spread this vicious propaganda relent if Israel were to
simply withdraw from the territories: would they then portray Israel as
a peace-loving nation, to be accepted by Islamic/Arab peoples? Perhaps.
I do not believe so.
......................................................................
Imagine if Kerry was a motivating force for Evangelicals to come out
and vote for Bush because the Bush campaign convinced them he was their
enemy, even if he wasn't. It would not be Kerry's policy that would
need to be changed, but the perception of the policy. And v.v.,
regarding the perception of Bush by many radical Democrats based on
what they were told about him.
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