US losing the campaign for hearts and minds

It is a surprisingly short document and shows no change in American propaganda strategy. The administration is still telling Muslims that Americans are good guys. That is, this is a document designed by Americans, for Americans - and not for the Muslim audiences it should be reaching.

There is still the intent to spread democracy, liberty and human rights, which are fine and good values but they are so often identified by the Bush administration with their country, as the “beacon of hope and opportunity for people across the world”, as this document states, that it gets in the way of it listening to others.

So this is not a new strategy. Before 9-11 in June 2001, according to Bob Woodward in State of Denial, Prince Bandar, the ambassador of Saudi Arabia and a close Bush family friend, tried to tell Bush, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice how the Middle East viewed America. After five hours, they still would not believe that Arabs viewed America as the bad guy who funded and armed Israel with the intent of destroying Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority. As Bandar said, whether these were the facts or not, these were the impressions of the Arabs.

Instead of facing such issues, Hughes’ recent strategy document advocates a focus on means rather than ends, probably in the belief that all it takes is better communication of the message rather than there being a problem with the message.

It’s a variation of shouting louder when you think people don’t understand.

Therefore, there is a focus on the expansion of education and exchange programs, the use of technology, modernised communications and the “diplomacy of deeds”. This last strategy is a version of the aphorism “actions speak louder than words”: that there are everyday things done by Americans to improve the lives of ordinary people elsewhere but few know it.

These actions need expansion and more publicity, states the document, for they “communicate our values and beliefs far more effectively than all of our words”.

This propaganda of deeds pervades the US army Youtube channel. However, the problem is that many Muslims already take the view that actions speak louder than words when they see Americans planes and guns acting contrary to American values and words.

Meanwhile, the military dominate American use of propaganda, as they do foreign policy, with information operations and psychological warfare at the expense of “public affairs”.

These three versions of propaganda have different objectives. The first two focus on battlefield success against the enemy while public affairs concerns credibility and truth with the media and the public. However, the US military is often subordinating this last strategy to the needs of the first two, much to the chagrin of Lieutenant-Colonel Pamela Keeton, who resigned from the army as the public affairs officer for the US Central Command to take a top civilian PR job.

For example, in 2004, CNN broadcast a report from an army officer of an impending attack on Fallujah. This was a lie because the army wanted to see the reactions of insurgents who were thought to watch the media.

Such lies bounce easily around an interconnected world and complicate the different audiences the Americans must deal with: their own citizens, Muslim opinion, and their friends.

Until its troops are removed from Iraq, the US will not benefit in the propaganda war from the sympathy of the majority of world Muslims who do not support attacks on civilians, Americans included, according to those same opinion polls. Once the Americans leave Iraq, a weakness in al-Qaida’s position in the propaganda war will be exposed.