EDITORIAL – Propaganda not enough for image

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is worried that the propaganda machine isn’t working as well… Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is worried that the propaganda machine isn’t working as well as we’d like it to. Don’t worry about the domestic one – that one’s just fine – instead, the concern is the media campaign in the Muslim world.

Rumsfeld believes that some of the negative attitudes toward the United States in the Middle East are the result of al-Qaida’s having “skillfully adapted” to the media age and learning how to exploit media outlets to win over public favor.

Ironically, this claim is a little difficult to buy. First, let’s note that this administration has managed to elevate the art of domestic propaganda to whole new levels. How difficult should it be to win the media war when you’re the spin machine that managed to convince a quarter of American voters that we’d found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (for the record: We didn’t) and the opposition is a loose network of nomads whose media operation is no more sophisticated than mounting a Betacam to a camel and letting Osama bin Laden just wing it?

Maybe the reasons the administration is struggling to win the PR war in the Middle East are similar to the reasons it’s struggling to win it everywhere else these days; maybe America’s dealings with the Middle East just haven’t been all that conducive to positive spin lately. Even Karl Rove has his limits – he is human, after all. Supposedly.

Part of the problem seems to be that the United States has come to symbolize to the Muslim world a collection of values it simply cannot approve of. This isn’t just a recent development and it isn’t just a result of the war effort; for decades, the Arab world has been undergoing varying degrees of Westernization, from the availability of American television over satellite to the McKebabs served up at the Tehran McDonald’s.

The Muslim world can tend to be rightfully anxious about the influence of Western culture on theirs, and invading big chunks of that area probably doesn’t help them feel any less nervous about a culture they see as greedy, immoral, vain and power-hungry.

It also probably doesn’t help that Americans don’t seem to be particularly fond of the Muslim world most of the time, either. Muslims stateside are subject to their fair share of intolerant attitudes, and the generally ethnocentric vibe the West gives off doesn’t exactly say “we invaded you to help” when the army shows up there with guns.

The idea that we care about the people of the Middle East and want to make their lives better also becomes a hard sell when things like the little photo shoot at Abu Ghraib surface. That was ugly here in the States – just imagine how seeing those pictures might make you feel if you were a normal person living in Iraq.

If the White House wants to put some more effort into improving America’s image in the Muslim world, that isn’t a bad thing in itself. If they want to do a better job of using the media to respond to criticism in the region, explain the war effort’s goals and promote tolerance, peace and democracy, that’s a perfectly admirable aspiration. But if they want to have a leg to stand on, the administration will have to start actually trying to make legitimate headway toward those goals and make America an easier brand name to sell.