How to Lose Friends and Encourage Extremists

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Fri, 17 Mar 2006 23:26:16 -0800

How to Lose Friends and Encourage Extremists

 

 

 

The United States had forfeited its right to report on abuses

committed by others by committing its own, failing to correct them,

and then holding no one in authority accountable. They said they

would have expected this behavior in their own countries, but not in

mine.

 

 

 

" the only people who are motivated by what America is doing are the

very people it's trying to defeat - Muslim extremists. "

 

 

 

Thursday, March 16, 2006 by CommonDreams.org

 

How to Lose Friends and Encourage Extremists

By William Fisher

 

One of my proudest moments as an American working in Egypt always

came at about this time of year, when the U.S. State Department issued

its annual report on the state of human rights around the world. I

remember sitting in front of a computer in a Cairo living room a year

before 9/11, while a group of young journalists, human rights

activists and academics downloaded the report from the Internet,

eager to see what the world's most trusted authority on the

rule of law had to say about their country and their region.

 

Their reaction was what made me grateful for having been born in the

U.S.A. Because they were bright, well-informed, and fiercely

pro-democracy, they quibbled about how the report phrased a partic!

ular human rights abuse or why this or that infraction hadn't been

given more or less emphasis.

 

But there was not the slightest doubt among them that this report

spoke truth or that, of all the world's countries, only the United

States of America had the performance record to speak with authority

and credibility on this subject.

 

When this year's Human Rights report appeared last week, I e-mailed it

to six of these old friends and asked them for their reactions

" off-the-record " .

 

They had a lot to say, but it all came down to this consensus:

 

 

The keywords in their e-mails to me included Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo,

Bagram, imprisonment without trial, ghost prisoners, kidnappings,

renditions, unilateralism, bribing journalists, and Bush & Company and

their whole Iraq adventure.

 

One of them wrote, " What kind of democracy is George Bush trying to

spread anyway? "

 

Lest Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh or Dick Cheney are immediately

tempted to attack the people who wrote to me, they need to know that

these men and women were as disbelieving and horrified by 9/11 as was

most of the rest of the world. Many of them had attended American

universities. They put their freedom on the line every day by

fighting autocratic rule. They are people who once thought of us as

the world's last best hope for progress and equity. And, yes, they are

all Muslims.

 

In short, these are precisely the people our current public diplomacy

maven, Karen Hughes, is supposed ! to be reaching through her efforts

to " win hearts and minds " .

 

But perhaps the job description of this culturally-challenged Friend

of Bush ought to ask, " How Do We Win Back the Hearts and Minds of

Friends We Have Lost? "

 

Through exchange programs? By trying to bond with Muslim women by

telling them that she, too, is a Mom? By insisting they drive the cars

they'd rather have their drivers drive? By denying or remaining silent

on what her country has become and by slavishly justifying whatever

her boss, the President, does in the name of the " Global War on Terror? "

 

One of the young women I wrote to summed it up this way:

 

" We're used to the iron fist of government in Egypt. We expect it. We

used to have someone we could count on to show our leaders how to lead

by setting an example of good governance without the iron fist. It was

America. Now that's gone. Now, the only pe! ople who are motivated by

what America is doing are the very people it's trying to defeat -

Muslim extremists. "

 

William Fisher can be reached at _Wfisher206_

(Wfisher206) .