Marketing American Foreign Policy

I've been thinking lately of the public-relations campaign that the Bush Administration began soon after the 9/11 attacks to convince people in Muslim countries how wonderful America was. They got commercial advertiser Charlotte Beers to head up the initial effort as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, . She was no slouch in the advertising world. She had been chairwoman of Ogilvy & Mather and J. Walter Thompson.

She resigned her post last year. But before she left, she produced such efforts as the "Shared Values Initiative" (video ads about how nice things are for Muslims in America) and a series of "Mosques in America" posters. A research at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley characterized the ad campaign this way: "The premise of U.S. propaganda in the Middle East is that Muslims and Arabs are idiots -- simple-minded, feeble-minded idiots. ... Arabic newspapers crack jokes about these ads all the time." (One might wonder why an American ad exec might take that approach to a target audience.)

The same researcher pointed out that the basic problem in the Beers approach was that it didn't address the substantive policy issues that affect US relations to the Arab world, especially the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "Even if they send dancing monkeys, even if they send Britney Spears to live for five years in the Middle East, it's not going to change how people feel," he said.

In their book Weapons of Mass Deception (2003), Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber describe how Beers' campaign fell short in practice:

These activities ... did little to persuade most Muslims, who found the war in Afghanistan more disturbing than anything that handshakes or posters could address. The irony is that of all the military activities in which the United States has engaged during the last 50 years, the war in Afghanistan was certainly one of the easiest to defend on its merits. The terrorism of 9/11 had provoked the U.S. well beyond the point at which any nation capable of responding militarily would feel compelled to do so.

Moreover, the Taliban that ruled Afghanistan not only harbored Osama bin Laden but had a record of such brutality that a war to drive them from power would likely save more lives than it would cost. Nevertheless, much of the Muslim world reacted to the war with mistrust, and the Beers communication strategy did not even attempt to justify it. The most frequent issues raising alarm in the Arab world were U.S. support for Israel, U.S. backing of authoritarian regimes such as those in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and America's reputation as a bullying superpower. The Beers branding strategy offered feel-good imagery but avoided those key issues entirely. (p. 27)

Rampton and Stauber stress that the problem was not that the items in the various ad campaigns were false. But rather, any positive potential from such an ad campaign would have to come from addressing "the issues at the core of Muslim resentment of the United States - the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the history of U.S. intervention in the region." (p. 31)

But those warriors against Evil, David Frum and Richard Perle, have a different take on Beers' efforts in An End to Evil (2003). In the somewhat paranoid view of the world communicated by their book, even Charlotte Beers was way too soft on the evil Muslims. According to Frum and Perle, the basic problem of her approach was that it was founded on the assumption that "[t]he most important reason extremism flourished in the Muslim world was that Muslims believed we were hostile to them." (p.148)

Frum and Perle say it was all well and good to make ritual appeals for tolerance for Muslims in America. But going beyond that to "active propitiation of Muslim opinion at home and abroad was not merely undignified, but dangerous." (p. 148) Why should the Greatest Country in the World, as our politicians of both parties routinely (and oh-so-humbly) describe the United States, have to explain to anybody why we're doing what we're doing?

Frum and Perle explain with relief that Beers, who they don't name but describe as a "high-powered advertising exec", resigned and that her State Department office of public diplomacy "has reverted to its accustomed (low) place in the bureaucratic scheme of things." (p. 150)

Is it adequate to say of their view that it implies that America shouldn't have to explain itself? Or do they really mean that America shouldn't have to explain itself in any way that implies a trace of humility or recognition that some Muslim grievances against the US may be based in reality? Actually, the former is more accurate.

In words very reminiscent of Gen. William Westmoreland's notorious statement that Asians just didn't put the same high value on human life that us good Americans do, Frum and Perle explain that "the people of the Middle East" don't care about innocent people getting killed as long as they aren't Muslims. They ridicule the notion that America should stress that attacks like 9/11 are "un-Islamic." Frum and Perle are going for a "highbrow" tone, so they don't use the language of a Michael Savage or a Rush Limbaugh. But they're clearly telling their readers that those Muslims just don't care about human life the way us Good People do.

They conclude by saying essentially that Those People (Muslims) don't understand anything but force. After a few pages of polemics about how backward and generally evil Arabs are, they conclude: "Confronted with such obdurate unreason, it may seem doubtful that other ideas can gain even a hearing, much less real influence. Yet we have seen many times how evil ideas that seemed to hold millions in their grip have yielded to new realities - or been smashed by unexpected defeats." (p. 157)

These two fans of war seem to be interested only in what anarchists used to call "the propaganda of the deed."

Tags: charlotte beers, david frum, john stauber, richard perle, sheldon rampton