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John Brown aggregates all the most recent public diplomacy related news, including current issues in U.S. foreign policy, international broadcasting and media, propaganda, cultural diplomacy, educational exchanges, anti-Americanism, and the reception of American popular culture abroad.

NOVEMBER 19, 2004
by John Brown

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY PRESS REVIEW, NOVEMBER 19

QUOTATIONS FOR THE DAY

“HOW CAN YOU ESTABLISH CREDIBILITY WHEN YOU’RE MISLEADING PEOPLE?”

--Mario Corti, a former RFE/RL Russian service; cited in Associated Press, “Radio Free Europe Woos Russian Listeners” (New York Times, November 19) (see item 5)

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“EQUAL DOESN’T MEAN THE SAME.”

--Journalist Robin Givhan, on President Bush’s appointment of two female cabinet members and publicly kissing them; Givhan notes that “A firm, congratulatory handshake does not seem particularly warm and embracing. And yet, he (Bush) couldn’t exactly grab them by the shoulders and slap them heartily on the back—as if they were men”; in Givhan’s “President Bush’s Kissing Cabinet” (Washington Post, November 19)
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“SOMETIMES I WATCH THE SUNSET OVER THOSE SNOWY PEAKS AND WANT TO HOWL WITH THE COYOTES.”

--From the just published novel by “soft power” Professor Joseph Nye, Jr; cited in Marisa Katz, “Joseph Nye Should Have Stuck To Nonfiction: Novel Approach [Review of “The Power Game: A Washington Novel” by Joseph S. Nye]” (New Republic) (see below item 9)

A) PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

1. COMPROMISE SOUGHT ON INTELLIGENCE LEGISLATION: NEGOTIATORS SCRAMBLE AS DEADLINE APPROACHES - CHARLES BABINGTON AND WALTER PINCUS (WASHINGTON, NOVEMBER 19): Despite the outstanding differences, the House and Senate have reached agreement on many proposals by the Sept. 11 commission, including the need to strengthen U.S. efforts to combat radical Islamic movements through public diplomacy. Even if the negotiations fail to produce a final bill this year, these agreements point to policy shifts that Congress and the administration seem likely to embrace next year.
LINK

2. ARAFAT’S POTENT USE OF SYMBOLS - JIM COMPTON (SEATTLE TIMES, NOVEMBER 19):  Those who follow Arab-American affairs know of the baleful condition of our information outreach to the Arab world. The prestigious Djerijian report to the Congress on public diplomacy, “Changing Minds, Winning Peace,” was a scathing indictment of how poorly we make our case to Arabs, saying we face “lethal threats to our interests and our safety. In this time of peril, public diplomacy’s absurdly and dangerously underfunded.” It continued, “If America does not define itself, the extremists will do it for us.” The flaw in that analysis, of course, is that there is no way to market a pointless war and a bankrupt strategy to the Arab world. Does anyone seriously believe democracy is about to burst forth in Iraq? It is a quagmire. We cannot spin or explain or otherwise justify a war that has no evident end or happy outcome.
LINK

3. CHANCE “TO MAKE THE COUNTRY SAFER”: PRINCETON RESIDENT AL FELZENBERG PLAYS CRITICAL ROLE ON STAFF OF 9-11 COMMISSION - JENNIFER POTASH (PRINCETON PACKET, NJ): The task of rebuilding the United States’ image in Islamic countries is the critical component to winning the war on terrorism, says Felzenberg, who has advised the Secretary of the Navy and the Voice of America. “How do you win over the hearts and minds of young people in parts of the world where the United States is not popular?” he asks. Public diplomacy, with the Voice of America radio stations and public libraries available in U.S. embassies, could help turn around anti-U.S. sentiment, he says.
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4. INNOCENCE ABROAD - ERIC R. STAAL (TECH CENTRAL STATION, OH): What can be done to mitigate European anti-American sentiment when it boils over into anti-American action? The first Bush administration struggled to find a solution with the establishment of a White House Office of Global Communications during the Iraq war and the appointment of advertising expert Charlotte Beers to head public diplomacy at the State Department. However, more needs to be done to tackle the problem at its European source. With the appointment of Rice to Secretary of State there is an opportunity to take a fresh approach.
LINK

5. RADIO FREE EUROPE WOOS RUSSIAN LISTENERS - ASSOCIATED PRESS (NEW YORK TIMES, NOVEMBER 19): Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, based in Prague, is trying to woo new listeners in Russia with a controversial overhaul that former dissidents and other critics contend will compromise its reputation and influence as a beacon of democracy. RFE/RL, whose 600 employees and network of 3,000 freelancers were overseen and funded by the CIA until 1971, now answers to the Washington-based Broadcasting Board of Governors and gets $75 million a year from Congress.
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6. US BUILDS TIES WITH ROMANIA THROUGH JAZZ - EMMANUEL EVITA (UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL/ WORLD PEACE HERALD, DC) Along with her Romanian compatriots, Teodora Enache is one of Romania’s jazz phenomena and one of the thousands of political activists, artists, and musicians tapped by the State Department to visit the United States through the International Visitor Leadership Program. The Visitor’s Program is one vehicle through which the State Department facilitates interaction, social, and professional exchanges between foreign, future political and cultural leaders and their U.S. counterparts over the course of several weeks. The program is also becoming a major tool of U.S. public diplomacy.
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7. GLOBALIST: WHERE A BITTER WOUND BRINGS RECONCILIATION - ROGER COHEN (INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 20): Killing Amy Biehl, Fulbright scholar, impassioned American campaigner for black rights in South Africa, was easy. She was white; she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Four men were arrested for Amy’s murder, among them Nofemela and Peni, and they received 18-year sentences. But their appeal for amnesty to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission established in 1994 was granted after the killing was deemed political in nature, part of the uprising against apartheid. By 1998, the men were free.
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8. BATTERY DANCE COMPANY – TOM PEARSON (PRESS RELEASE, NOVEMBER 1): Battery Dance Company, Downtown New York’s Resident Dance Company, is cited as a model of cultural diplomacy in a new book, “The Battle of Ideas in the War on Terror” by Robert Satloff. After September 11th, Battery Dance Company was the first American dance company to perform in Arab nations under the auspices of the U.S. Department of State. During the spring of 2004, the Company toured Morocco, Tunisia and Jordan. In his new book Satloff praises BDC Artistic Director Jonathan Hollander for recognizing the value of dance as a viable form of cultural diplomacy; and for his success in bringing Americans and Moroccans closer together through art, while efforts of statesmanship were failing all around. More information on Battery Dance Company available at LINK Interviews with Jonathan Hollander and video footage of Moroccan performances are available upon request.

9. JOSEPH NYE SHOULD HAVE STUCK TO NONFICTION: NOVEL APPROACH [REVIEW OF THE POWER GAME: A WASHINGTON NOVEL BY JOSEPH S. NYE] - MARISA KATZ (NEW REPUBLIC): “At the point in the book when the semi-autobiographical protagonist starts making an argument for soft power (though without going so far as to use those words) I began to wonder whether Nye was just trying to attract people to the academic idea he’s been articulating for the last decade by using another medium: the novel. It would be like deciding to shift from diplomacy to pop culture as your choice avenue of persuasion. If that’s the case, I’m afraid Nye may have somewhat diminished his power reserves by writing a book that is beneath so serious an academic.”
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B) RELATED ITEMS

10. DID FALLUJAH SINK THE ELECTIONS? - JUAN COLE (INFORMED COMMENT: THOUGHTS ON THE MIDDLE EAST, HISTORY, AND RELIGION, NOVEMBER 19): It seems likely that the Fallujah offensive has so deeply alienated the Sunni Arab populace of Iraq, which is probably 4 million to 4.5 million strong, that it has ensured that they will boycott the polls as American-sponsored.
LINK

11. THE HEARTBREAK OF WAR - J. SCOTT SMITH (SALON, NOVEMBER 18): Tonight, George Bush will go to sleep happy, comfortable in his electoral victory and looking forward to spending that political capital he says he “earned.” Meanwhile a man and his innocent child lie rotting on a dusty Fallujah street.
LINK

12. BREAKING IT - OPINION (BALTIMORE SUN, NOVEMBER 19): The difference between Grozny and Fallujah is that American troops proved far better at minimizing their own casualties in Iraq than the Russians did in Chechnya. Otherwise, the results look remarkably similar. LINK

13. HOW AMERICA WAGES WAR IN IRAQ - FIRAS AL-ATRAQCHI (ISLAMONLINE): The US onslaught in Iraq is not humanitarian, nor is it compassionate. It is the taste of hatred and brutality, one that has been equalled by the razing armies of history-- the Nazis, the Romans, the Visigoths, the Mongols—but rarely exceeded.
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14. FALLUJAH: SHOCK AND AWE - KEN COATES (COMMON DREAMS, NOVEMBER 19): What is absolutely clear is that large swathes of Falluja have been literally pulverized, ground to powder by the kind of destructive machine that Hermann Goering could hardly imagine. Just as we do not know how many innocents have been massacred, neither do the Iraqi people. But they know about the moral depth of this atrocity. They know that Iraqi lives do not count for the coalition, nor for its servants in the Iraqi detachments of American intelligence, who now call themselves Ministers.
LINK

15. ON “IRAQIFYING” THE QUAGMIRE: DRAINING THE SWAMP - TOM ENGELHARDT (TOMDISPATCH.COM): In Iraq, the phrase is still “drain the swamp.” Falluja was actually our second attempt to drain the Iraqi “swamp” by obliterating it—our first having been in the Old City of Najaf—which meant of course draining out of it those hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, many of whom may have felt little sympathy for the Talibanization of Falluja but undoubtedly now feel great anger at the brutal actions of their occupiers. Unsurprisingly, the process of draining the swamp in Iraq has had the effect of turning what were previously cities into the equivalent of swamps, places fit only for those “snakes.”
LINK

16. KILLING ON TAPE AND THE BROADER WAR CRIMINALITY - PAUL STREET (DISSIDENT VOICE, CA): Why do they hate us? Because “we” are, among other things, war criminals. If you are Arab and/or Muslim today, chances you have been watching, hearing about, discussing, and feeling deep rage over some terrible film footage. It’s been the story of the day on Al-Jazeera, played and discussed and denounced over and over again. The white imperial Marines walk into a mosque in ravaged Fallujah, where the bodies of dead and injured resistance fighters lay prone on the floor. We hear one Marine speak to another, talking about one of the wounded: “He’s fucking faking that he’s dead.” Response: “yeah, he’s breathing.” The American release video goes black but we are permitted to hear a rifle shot. “He’s dead now.”
LINK

17. THE ROAD FROM FALLUJAH – EDITORIAL (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 19): So the roads into Fallujah are now in coalition hands—thanks in part to the largely solid performance of newly trained Iraqi troops. Less assured is the condition of the road out. It will lead to an eventually more secure and self-assured Iraq, or to a propaganda-driven perception that the government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is merely the gloved hand of a brutish America.
LINK

18. WHAT THE MARINE DID: THE SHOOTING OF AN UNARMED IRAQI WAS A TRAGEDY. BUT WAS IT A WAR CRIME? - OWEN WEST AND PHILLIP CARTER (SLATE, NOVEMBER 18): Killing an insurgent in a split second because it was instinctual was a tragedy, not an atrocity.
LINK

19. WE WON’T HAVE A DRAFT: TROOPS IN FALLUJAH ARE THE BEST SINCE WORLD WAR II - DANIEL HENNINGER (OPINION JOURNAL FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIAL PAGE, NOVEMBER 19): The amazing, perhaps historic, battle of Fallujah has come and gone, and the biggest soldier story to come out of it is the alleged Marine shooting. There must have been hundreds of acts of bravery and valor in Fallujah. Where will history record their stories?
LINK

20. AFTER FALLUJAH VIDEO, CONGRESSMAN QUESTIONS EMBED PROGRAM - E&P STAFF (EDITOR & PUBLISHER): The videotaped shooting of an injured Fallujah insurgent by a U.S. Marine has not only provoked strong emotions in the Arab world—it’s also causing fallout on Capitol Hill. While some charge that embedded reporters are often too protective of the military, Sylvestre Reyes (D-Texas) feels they are dangerous loose cannons, and says it’s time to consider revoking their privileges.
LINK

21. TROJAN WAR’S LESSONS FOR IRAQ - YU JIN KO (BOSTON GLOBE, NOVEMBER 19): “Within Iraq itself, the president could reduce bloodshed considerably, I believe, if he went there and spoke directly to the people. Much has been made of the (very real) power of freedom and ideas to inspire ordinary Iraqis to embrace change. Why not tour the country, including Fallujah, and address the people in secured arenas or other public places? To many Iraqis, Bush’s remoteness from them is just another emblem of the untouchable supremacy of the American empire of military and corporate might.”
LINK

22. POWELL’S TALK OF ARMS HAS FALLOUT: HIS REMARK THAT IRAN IS WORKING TO JOIN MISSILES AND WARHEADS MAY HAVE BEEN BASED ON CLASSIFIED DATA. ALLIES, LAWMAKERS WANT FULL DISCLOSURE - SONNI EFRON, TYLER MARSHALL AND BOB DROGIN (LOS ANGELES TIMES, NOVEMBER 19): One senior Democrat on the House International Relations Committee said Iran’s efforts to build nuclear weapons and mount them on missiles have been known for years, but the United States faces new hurdles in making its case to the world. “After crying wolf for so long about Iraq, how are we going to have any credibility on this?” said Rep. Gary L. Ackerman of New York, who recently returned from a trip to the Middle East. “People in the Arab world won’t believe it and say we have a bad track record and just want to invade another country in the Middle East.”
LINK

23. COLIN POWELL ERA ENDS - HELLE DALE (WASHINGTON TIMES, NOVEMBER 17): On his fairly rare visits overseas, Mr. Powell would blow audiences away with his style and eloquence. He could have been the biggest weapon in the U.S. diplomatic arsenal. But a reluctant traveler, he failed to deploy the State Department’s best weapon, himself, even as public opinion around the world regarding U.S. policies sunk to new lows.
LINK

24. “GOOD SOLDIER” POWELL SERVED NATION, NOT PARTY - DANIEL SCHORR (CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, NOVEMBER 19): A lot of Colin Powell’s work as secretary of State involved maintaining and repairing America’s friendships, which were under constant strain from the Rumsfeld Pentagon and the administration’s unilateralists. But serving as secretary of State, on the whole, was clearly not a happy experience for Powell.
LINK

25. POWELL’S PAST DIMS HIS FUTURE - OPINION (BALTIMORE SUN): Mr. Powell’s service as a loyal soldier in the ranks of a Bush foreign policy team with which he so often disagreed has left him with a diminished reputation for effectiveness within the Republican Party and an eroded respect for his integrity among many Democrats.
LINK

26. POWELL: TRUE BLUE OR UNBELIEVABLE? - LETTER TO THE EDITOR (LOS ANGELES TIMES, NOVEMBER 19)
LINK

27. BUSH NAMES NEW SECRETARY OF STATE: HIMSELF! – BILL PRESS (WORLDNETDAILY, NOVEMBER 19): Condoleezza Rice is everything Colin Powell is not—a sycophant and a cheerleader. During the build-up to the war in Iraq, she was so busy being Bush’s echo, she failed at her job. She’s also a big Bush groupie. Known for spending all her weekends and vacations at Camp David or the Crawford ranch, never far from the boss. She even took time out this fall to stump for Bush in battleground states, something no National Security Adviser has ever done before.
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28. FOR BUSH, CONFIDENCE CAN CUT TWO WAYS - DAVID IGNATIUS (WASHINGTON POST, NOVEMBER 19): For friends and enemies abroad who have been wondering who’s really in charge of U.S. foreign policy, the answer is now unmistakable: A victorious and newly confident George W. Bush is running the show. That has benefits for a nation at war that needs clear leadership. But it has dangers that can be summed up in the Greek word for leaders who, through overconfidence, destroy themselves: hubris.
LINK

29. THE POWER OF ONE - DAVID GERGEN (NEW YORK TIMES, NOVEMBER 19): The president apparently intends no less than to ensure long-term American hegemony over the world. The more immediate danger is that Mr. Bush and his troika (Cheney, Rove, and Rice) are falling into a trap facing other re-elected presidents: hubris.
LINK

30. WAR AND PEAS: THIS THANKSGIVING, AMERICA SHOULD SHOW A LITTLE HUMILITY - ROGER DOIRON (COMMON DREAMS, NOVEMBER 19): The roots of America’s foreign policy arrogance reach back many years and enjoy fertile ground in both political parties.
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31. BUSH’S ECHO CHAMBER - BOB HERBERT (NEW YORK TIMES, NOVEMBER 19): Ms. Rice’s domain was the filter through which an awful lot of mangled and misshapen intelligence made its way to the president and the American people. She either believed the nonsense she was spouting about mushroom clouds, or she deliberately misled her president and the nation on matters that would eventually lead to the deaths of thousands.
LINK

32. BUSH SENDING A MESSAGE - LINDA CHAVEZ (WASHINGTON TIMES WEB, NOVEMBER 19): Given the dangerous world in which we now live and the tough fight ahead, not only in Iraq but elsewhere in the war on terror, the president must be able to count on his top aides. He’s chosen well for himself and the country in these first two important picks (Rice and Gonzalez).
LINK

33. ASSIGNMENT U.N. - ARNOLD BEICHMAN (WASHINGTON TIMES, NOVEMBER 19): Condoleezza Rice needs to take a hard look at the United Nations and ask what good, after six decades, does this institution do in furthering world peace, or in furthering democracies so essential to keeping the world at peace. Above all, what has the United Nations done to delegitimize U.N. members, especially Islamo-fascist countries, which practice and encourage terrorism?
LINK

34. FOLLOW THE TRAIL OF RICE - AL KAMEN (IN THE LOOP, WASHINGTON POST, NOVEMBER 19): Chatter about foreign policy appointments.
LINK

35. THE REAL HUMANISTS: REVOLUTION FROM AFGHANISTAN TO IRAQ – VICTOR DAVIS HANSON (NATIONAL REVIEW): George Bush’s radical efforts to cleanse the world of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, bring democracy to the heart of the Arab world, and isolate Yasser Arafat were the most risky and humane developments in the Middle East in a century—old-fashioned idealism backed with force in a postmodern age of abject cynicism and nihilism.
LINK

36. ESSAY: GETTING BEYOND THE HYPOCRISY - HILLEL HALKIN (JERUSALEM POST, NOVEMBER 18): Who is a terrorist, then? Well, the perpetrators of 9/11 were terrorists because they (1) deliberately killed civilian Americans; (2) chose their victims at random (it didn’t matter to them who was in the Twin Towers when they collapsed); and (3) had the political goal of frightening American society and goading the American government into actions that would rally Muslims to the jihadist cause. And by the same token, the Palestinians who for decades, at Yasser Arafat’s behest, killed Israelis simply for being Israelis in order to promote the goals of the Palestinian Liberation Organization were terrorists, too. Why doesn’t the world understand this? Because, the world says, you can’t compare bin Laden with Arafat.
LINK

37. URGING CAUTION IN THE MIDDLE EAST: CHIRAC TELLS BUSH AND BLAIR THAT TRYING TO SPREAD DEMOCRACY AS A SAFEGUARD AGAINST TERRORISM IS A BAD IDEA, CITING ARAB FEARS OF WESTERN DOMINATION - EWEN MACASKILL (SALON, NOVEMBER 19): Chirac reiterated his view that Europe should form a bloc as a counterbalance to the U.S. He called for the revival of multilateralism, mainly through the United Nations, rather than a world based on the “logic of power,” namely the U.S. Chirac pointedly stressed the importance of dialogue between Europe and “the world’s major poles”—China, India, Brazil, Russia and various trading blocs.
LINK

38. SHOW TIME IN KIEV - ARIEL COHEN (WASHINGTON TIMES, NOVEMBER 19): The region’s geopolitical outcome depends on Washington’s engagement in Eurasia, including with the Kremlin; a U.S.-Russian agreement on “traffic rules”; and on Moscow abandoning an aggressively anti-American policy within and beyond the territory of the former Soviet Union.
LINK

39. RELIGION’S ETERNAL LIFE - JONATHAN SACHS (LOS ANGELES TIMES, NOVEMBER 19): If, in Europe, modernity meant a retreat from religious passion, the American paradox is that such passion coexists with secular politics. But in other parts of the world there has been a third trajectory, in which religion has emerged as a mass protest against failed secular nationalisms of the kind that Gamal Abdel Nasser introduced into Egypt and Saddam Hussein into Iraq. Here religion functions as a critique of modernity: mass poverty, widespread unemployment, political corruption and human rights abuse. In such environments, religion alone seems to speak the language of human dignity and hope, and until we understand this, we will utterly fail to comprehend the strength of reaction against regimes that sought to imitate the West.
LINK

40. CHINA EASES RULES ON JOINT TV VENTURES - REUTERS (NEW YORK TIMES, NOVEMBER 19): The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television said foreigners would be allowed to own up to 49 percent of the joint ventures. But foreign investors, limited to “professional broadcasting companies” will not be able to work without a Chinese partner. Two-thirds of programs must use Chinese themes and news programs remain forbidden. China’s strictly controlled television is heavy on patriotic fare, and Beijing has long used the medium as a propaganda organ.
LINK

41. THEATER: “DEMOCRACY”: A SUNNY LEADER IN THE WALL’S SHADOW - PETER MARKS (WASHINGTON POST, NOVEMBER 19): Michael Frayn’s fascinating “Democracy” is on one level the story of West Germany’s struggle to establish a vibrant multiparty system. One of Frayn’s points that in a democracy, betrayals are as central to the process as alliances are.
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