Posted on: Sunday, August 22, 2004

THE RISING EAST

By Richard Halloran

Several Asian visitors to Honolulu trooped down to a local cinema the other day to see the controversial film "Fahrenheit 9/11," produced by Michael Moore, and came out astonished, not by its vehement criticism of President Bush, but by the American freedom the film reflected.

Said an Indian: "I am amazed that you have the freedom to make such a film. In my country, which is a democracy, we could never have shown such a film."

A Vietnamese, whose country is not a democracy, said: "I thought the movie was very unfair to your president, but Michael Moore is still walking around free."

Similarly, visiting South Korean editors were taken to a laboratory where the repatriated remains of Americans who died in the Korean and Vietnam wars are painstakingly identified. "I was really surprised," said one of these journalists, "that you care so much that you go to all that trouble to find out who each one was. I think that shows American values."

In another instance, at a social gathering for Asians hosted by Americans, a Russian observed: "Look at the Americans, they just blend in like everyone else. If this had been held by other people, you can be sure everyone would know who was putting it on."

All this raises an intriguing — and troubling — question: If the Americans are such free, caring and unassuming people, why is their image so bad across the Muslim world and among supposed friends and allies in Western Europe and East Asia?

Put another way, why can't the United States get its message across to other people when it has an elaborate communications apparatus in its mass media, the world's most persuasive advertising industry and legions of public-relations experts?

Part of the reason may be that the Bush administration doesn't know how or doesn't care.

The secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was asked in Chicago earlier this month what could be done about the vicious anti-American propaganda emanating from Al-Jazeera, the Islamic cable news network based in Qatar, and other Islamic sources.

Rumsfeld said Al-Jazeera and others "have persuaded a pile of people that what's happening (in Iraq) is a terrible thing." He asked rhetorically: "Will we survive it? Yes. Is there anything we can do about it? No."

Faint signs last week suggested that the Bush administration has become aware of the issue. The president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said in a speech: "We are obviously not very well-organized for the side of public diplomacy." She added: "The victory of freedom in the Cold War was won only when the West remembered that values and security cannot be separated."

An expert on the Middle East who serves on a White House advisory group, however, was scathing. Shibley Telhami was quoted in the Washington Post: "Three years after Sept. 11, you can say there wasn't even much of an attempt, and today Arab and Muslim attitudes toward the U.S. and the degree of distrust in the U.S. are far worse than they were three years ago.

"Bin Laden," he said, referring to the al-Qaida leader, "is winning by default."

One of Rumsfeld's predecessors, James Schlesinger, secretary of defense in the Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford administrations, was equally critical. Writing in the publication National Interest, Schlesinger said: "We have failed to convey to the Iraqis what our intentions are — or have conveyed them belatedly. Consequently, all too many excellent and well-intentioned actions on our part have not gotten through to the Iraqi public. It is almost as important that such plans or such actions be understood as that they be executed."

The U.S.-financed Iraq TV station al Iraqiya, Schlesinger writes, "has not been well-designed to attract an audience and has thus been peripheral for Iraqi viewers," an assessment supported by U.S. viewer surveys.

The recently-issued 9/11 commission report widened the argument with a plea that the United States engage in the struggle of ideas.

Pointing to the plummeting view of America, the report said: "The U.S. government must define what the message is, what it stands for. We should offer an example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors.

"If the United States does not act aggressively to define itself in the Islamic world," the commission concluded, "the extremists will gladly do the job for us."

Richard Halloran is a former New York Times correspondent in Asia.