Telling America's story
America could be on the verge of winning a victory against terrorism even more significant than it looks. Not only do the days of Osama bin Laden seem numbered, but authoritative sources say that if he and his henchmen are caught, the United States could also buy as much as two years of peace before another mass assault like September 11. That doesn't mean the war against terrorism will be won. Far from it. The United States remains vulnerable to terrorists and must make urgent efforts to beef up defenses at home. Overseas, we have a clear interest in toppling Saddam Hussein--by military means if we have evidence of his complicity in the World Trade Center attacks, by other means if we don't. We must be aggressive, as well, in breaking up other terrorist outfits.
Al Qaeda, however, is said to be the one network that has both the capacity and will to carry off attacks as complicated as the one in September. If we can remove the threat of al Qaeda so quickly and with so little loss of civilian life--a big plus with moderate Arabs--the U.S. military and the Bush administration will deserve immense credit.
But even as we carry the fight to other terrorists, how can we begin to reverse our losses in the psychological war within the Muslim world? We may win today's war, but how do we secure tomorrow's peace? How do we build new bridges of trust so that Muslim lands do not remain a breeding ground for new waves of terrorists? Reading recent commentaries, one might suppose that the struggle for "hearts and minds" is hopeless. No matter how often Americans give interviews, the television network al Jazeera will continue to spew out poison against the United States and Israel to its 35 million Arab viewers. With public schools so backward, millions of young Muslims will continue to seek instruction in madrasahs, religious institutions that are virulently anti-American and are currently backed by billions in Saudi money. Some Muslim parents will still have large families so they can supply more fighters for a jihad.
Arab sympathies will all rest with Saddam and may soon turn Osama bin Laden into the Che Guevara of the Middle East.
So, the struggle for gaining an appreciation of America will be daunting. But we must try. In the past 20 years, America has done a lousy job of telling its story in Arab lands. Not only have we been indifferent to moderates who might be our friends, but penny pinchers in Congress have dismantled some of the few assets we had. Our embassies overseas no longer have libraries, once popular gathering places for foreign nationals. We have also wiped out the United States Information Agency, canceled Arab-language magazines, and cut back on cultural tours that helped in building bridges.
Trust. We should restore all those things and be much more imaginative in getting out some basic facts. As President Clinton told audiences last week at Harvard, most Arabs don't seem to know that Americans respect the Muslim faith so much that it is the fastest-growing religion in the country. They seem unaware that Muslims were among the victims of September 11, killed in clear violation of the Koran. And that when the FBI recently asked for 200 Arabic speakers to help them combat terrorism, there were 15,000 volunteers.
Nor do young Muslims remember that the United States sent 500,000 troops to the Persian Gulf a decade ago to protect Muslims in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from the depredations of Saddam. Or that 18 American soldiers died in Somalia in 1993 trying to arrest Mohammed Farah Aidid because he had murdered 22 Pakistani Muslim peacekeepers. Or that America last used its military might to protect Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Arabs protest our evenhandedness in the dispute between Israel and Palestinians, but they don't seem to understand that the long, steady efforts by the United States to bring about a settlement have only borne as much fruit as they have because the Israelis trust us as a friend. Or that we shell out $5 billion a year to keep peace between Egypt and Israel. Or that a long-term peace will be possible only if America provides more guarantees. Many Arabs also protest United Nations sanctions against Saddam, claiming they are causing the deaths of starving Iraqi children. We must prove to them, as Michael Rubin did in the New Republic, that northern Iraq is living under the sanctions but its leaders have behaved responsibly so that infant mortality there is actually lower than it was before the sanctions were imposed in 1990. "The United Nations isn't starving Saddam's people," Rubin writes; "Saddam is." Indeed, columnist Thomas Friedman calculates Saddam has killed a million Muslims over his bloody career.
America is big enough that we should admit that we have our failings. We must do far more than we have recently in helping poorer peoples gain freedom and justice. But we also have a good story, and we must tell it to the world with as much verve and imagination as we are now showing on the field of battle.
This story appears in the December 3, 2001 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.