Speakers:
Shibley Telhami
Sadat Chair, Univeristy of Maryland; Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution
Brian Katulis
Director of Democracy and Public Diplomacy, Center for American Progress
Jon Alterman
Director and Senior Fellow, Middle East Program, CSIS
Milton Viorst
Author, Storm from the East
Moderator/Discussant
Chas. W. Freeman, Jr.
President, Middle East Policy Council
Capitol Building, Room HC-8
Washington, D.C.
July 20, 2006
Transcript by:
Federal News Service
Washington, DC
CHAS W. FREEMAN, JR.: We are going to get started even though we are missing a key panelist. He is probably caught in the security procedures at the gate. I hope everybody feels very secure.
For those of you who don't work in this building or in anywhere connected to it underground, I commend you on your fortitude on coming through this horrible hot weather. You obviously have to be interested in the topic. And we welcome you.
For those of you who don't know me, I'm Chas Freeman, and it's my honor and sometimes pleasure to be president of the Middle East Policy Council, a small, struggling organization that has been around for about 30 years attempting to educate the uneducable about realities in the Middle East.
We do three things. We come up here to the heart of darkness and we light a candle to illuminate some politically incorrect or awkward or overly neglected topic, and then we make the transcript of the discussion. That becomes the first item in our quarterly, which is the most commonly cited in the field, and which is full of interesting analyses, opinions, and recommendations. We have one member of the editorial board here, Shibley Telhami. Shibley, we are very glad to have you here.
And finally, throughout the country, we have conducted a program of training high school teachers in how to teach about the Arab civilization and Islam, and we have trained about 18,000, reach about 1.4 million kids a year, with a fact or two, which is at least one fact more than they would otherwise encounter in the course of their public school education, and therefore quite worthwhile.
We have this morning the perfect topic for the sort of discussion that we like to do. It is a topic which is discussed in our media with all of the intellectual consistency and substance of the flatulence of cows.
It is the subject of famous conventional wisdom. We all knew before 9/11 that we were admired and emulated by foreigners, including foreigners in the Middle East. Yet on 9/11 we learned that we were hated because of our values. Now I think the American people perceive that in fact we are widely disliked, and our government is detested. And there is a question - Jon, welcome. I assume you were caught in the security. We now suspect that Americans are increasingly unwelcome in the region. At any rate, there are many theories and very few facts in this arena, and I suspect that, as is so often the case, the conventional wisdom is more conventional than wise.
So we will today have an opportunity to discuss Middle Eastern views of the United States and what the trends indicate. I hope we will be able to break this down into parts and not stay at a high level of generality. And I'm delighted to say that we have at truly wonderful panel today to go over this topic.
For those on the panel who are new to this process, you get to speak for 10 or 12 minutes. If you exceed that, I throw you off the rostrum physically. I will menace you with little notes and other annoying things as you approach your time limit. There is no amplification today, so you must speak up. If those of you in the back can't hear, raise your hand or do something else to get my attention.
Now we will proceed. I am not going to recapitulate the biographies of everybody in the panel because they are on the back of the program.
I will just say Shibley Telhami is of course the Anwar Sadat Professor at Maryland, and is at the Brookings Institution, I believe.
Brian Katulis, seated over here, is at the Center for American Progress. He worked in the Middle East, and was on the NSE staff and policy planning council.
Jon Alterman runs a marvelous program on the Middle East at CSIS, the Center for Strategic and International Studies. And he too has been on the policy planning staff at State.
And Milton Viorst is an author, writer, with many, many wonderful books and articles to his credit, including most recently one that I'm greatly enjoying, which is called "Storm From the East: The Struggle Between the Arab World and the Christian West," which puts the current difficulties in historical perspective very succinctly and evocatively.
So with these few words, and hoping that I have not left anybody out. I will invite the panel to come up and speak briefly. Shibley, you're on first.
SHIBLEY TELHAMI: Thanks very much. I would like to begin by addressing the question of who cares about Arab public opinion? I mean, there is a - we're in some ways, we're looking at attitudes toward the United States and the Arab world. And we have a lot of people in this town who say, so what does it matter? You know, public opinion really doesn't matter much.
And they have a lot of evidence on their side, frankly. Arab governments have gone against their public opinion in the recent Iraq war and survived. Over 90 percent of Arabs didn't want the Iraq war, and frankly, many Arab states not only supported it tacitly, but actually cooperated with the United States. We had American military stationed on their soil.
And even now, you look at this crisis in Gaza and Lebanon, and you see where public opinion is. Public opinion in the Arab world, whether it's Sunni or Shi'a or Christian, is decidedly on the side of Hezbollah. We haven't had scientific public opinion surveys since the crisis across the Arab world, but there have been a lot of evidence, not only just reporting and anecdotal evidence, but some significant nonscientific polling like the one that Al Jazeera, where 200,000 people participated in it on an online survey, and 91 percent of people who participated said they endorsed Hezbollah.
So what you have in this case is a huge gap between public opinion, and you have governments, particularly Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and others who have been very bold in a way in going against that tide and taking a position that Hezbollah is at least in part, if not mostly to blame, for the Lebanese crisis. So you have a significant gap that has emerged. And clearly the bet by governments that they can ride the storm of public opinion and prevail, they can make the strategic calculations based on other issues - and so in that sense, why should we even be paying attention to where public opinion is on this issue.
So let me tell you why - just very briefly, why it still matters and why we cannot ignore it before I tell you where it is. First, think about this gap. I mean, you know, all of this discourse about - that follow 9/11 was initially was it's about the political system in the region. The absence of democracy is correlated with the strength of anti-American terrorism. That was conventional wisdom; that the spread of democracy was a policy that came out of this accepted notion in conventional wisdom.
And you look at this environment in which we operate, where you have what - the policies are widening the gap between governments and publics, and imagine how the Saudis or the Egyptians or the Jordanians tomorrow morning are going to be able to open up the political system when they have a strongly opposed public opinion.
So what you are going to have in the short term - undoubtedly this gap exacerbates and increases repression, because the only way you can control the tide of public opinion is by being more oppressive, even if you have these electoral exercises that you go - and that is why, by the way, when you ask people in the Arab world is the Middle East more democratic or less democratic than it was before the Iraq war, the majority say it's less democratic, despite the fact that we have had obviously some apparent improvements in the electoral process in a number of countries.
So, first, the casualty of all of this most certainly will be any idea that democracy or more participatory kind of political system will emerge as a consequence of this widening gap that can be addressed in the short term by insecure governments only through increased repression. And that is a casualty. If we understand that and we're willing to live with the consequence of that, that is one thing.
The second thing is while it is of course true that we can actually pressure governments to accept positions that go against the public opinion, the cost of doing business is much higher. It takes a lot more power to do that. The United States remains the most powerful nation in the world. It is still more powerful than anyone else. Despite all of the weakness that emerged out of the Iraq war, despite all of the expenditures that came out of the Iraq war, the United States is still the most powerful nation on earth.
We have the capacity to prevail on any small issue. It is the cost of doing business that escalates. It makes it very hard to manage, we pay too heavy a price, and that eventually becomes a complicating factor at a minimum more down the road in terms of the exercise of American power.
And third, where you have public opinion that is going very strongly against you, it is very hard for you to fight your enemies in the environment where more people think you are the enemy more than your enemies.
So, for example, if you are trying to get the Pakistani security services and military to be wholeheartedly dedicated to the eradication of al Qaeda in Pakistan, and they deep down in their heart think this is an American war, they don't like America, and they - even if they don't endorse al Qaeda, the extent to which you are going to have full cooperation, the extent to which you are going to have public cooperation - the public will tell you where they are hiding - is going to be diminished, significantly diminished. So your ability to succeed, particularly when it comes to this kind of operations, diminish.
And finally, the task that is facing - the challenges that are facing many of the countries, but particularly the United States, are primarily challenges that come from non-state actors much more than from states. As such, the U.S. has really, even with Iran - you know, a complicated factor - Iran is still a deterrable country, and the same thing with Syria.
And so the war - as we can see in the insurgency in Iraq, as we can see in the insurgency in Iraq, as we can see in the stability in the relationship with Syria despite the fact that the U.S. and Israel don't like Syria, and Syria can be a menace, it still can be deterred.
And when it comes to non-state groups, public opinion matters a lot because that is where the groups are going to be connected to the public, that is where they are going to draw their support, that is where they are going to draw their power. And so in that sense, public opinion matters a lot despite the fact that you can have a lot of people who will just be accepting or at least are not going to take on their governments if there is such a gap.
Revolutions are rare in history, and the chance that they will happen in the Arab world because of this gap remains small. They don't happen very often. Frankly, in modern times, we have only had really the Iranian revolution as a real genuine public revolution that took place. That is always there as a possibility, but the chance of it is small. But all of these other things mean that these trends matter.
What are the trends? So let me very quickly tell you what the trends have been over the past five years. I have been polling five countries - in six countries, in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Lebanon for the past five years, with the Zogby International to look at a variety of attitudes, not only attitudes toward the Untied States.
And if you ask me what is new in the past year that is different from - what has changed, I wouldn't say that it's the fact that many Arabs don't like American foreign policy; I think the truth of the matter is many Arabs didn't like American foreign policy even when the foreign policy was a little bit more balanced from the point of view of the Arab world.
There have been really two things that have happened over the past five years, one that we have began detecting already in 2000, 2001, after the collapse of the - after the collapse of the Camp David negotiations with Israel and the Palestinians, and the is the decline in the trust in the United States. Trust is different from do you like foreign policies? Do you have confidence in the government? And that we have seen is a dramatic decline in the confidence measure particularly from, particularly after the collapse of the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. Those continued to decline after 9/11. That is one.
The second is that we have seen that, particularly in the last - in the most recent survey, what we have seen is that the United States is now seen as a threat, a primary threat. It's not just that they don't like America, but the United States is seen as a primary threat in the Arab world by a majority of the public.
In an open question that I asked, name the two countries that you think are - that are the most threatening to you, the vast majority of people in every country named the United States and Israel as the two countries that are most threatening to them. And Iran, which you would think would be seen as a threat, at least in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - those who identified it as a threat were in the single digit. And that tells you that, again, the Iraq war has become a new prism through which Arabs are looking at the United States and looking at the Middle East.
I know I am told I have only minute. So let me just wrap it up by saying - by giving you two more examples pertaining to this. When you ask people what - in a world where you have a single superpower, which of the following country would you like that superpower be, the United States is at the bottom of that scale, together with Russia. France, by the way, is number one; surprisingly remains number one, mostly because of its position on Iraq, nothing else. But China and Pakistan score pretty well up there right after.
And when you ask people on Iran specifically do you believe that Iranians are developing nuclear weapons, a plurality of Arabs, nearly half believe that Iran is actually developing nuclear weapons. If you ask them, do you think the international community should pressure Iran to stop that, a majority say no. Again, they see that mostly through the prism of the American threat, and therefore they are willing to even bypass this perceived threat. That is separate from the governments, where obviously the governments in the Gulf see Iran as a threat and have a different kind of strategy. We're talking about public opinion.
But I want to end with one comment that I think we have - a lot of people have misunderstood this rise of frustration toward the U.S. as being an endorsement of al Qaeda's agenda in the region. And they have used all of these seeming trends, of rise of Islamism in - Muslim Brotherhood Egypt, Hamas in the Palestinian areas, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and so forth, as an example of this rising tide that endorses a pan-Islamic agenda. The evidence is not there.
On the contrary, al Qaeda has not been able to win hearts and minds. Most people have not endorsed its agenda. In fact, what aspect of al Qaeda do you sympathize with most, only 6 percent say they sympathize with their advocacy of a puritanical Islamic state. Only 7 percent, they say - they sympathize with their methods. A plurality say they like the fact that they are standing up to the United States. This is a negative, not a positive.
And if you look at these other Islamic groups, and also the trends, the positions of the public on social issues, you find that they are rejecting the agenda that is advocated by al Qaeda, but they win by default because of the anger toward the United States. Thanks very much.
MR. FREEMAN: Thank you, Shibley. I think you have made a pretty clear case that public opinion does shape the environment in which the United States and other countries must defend their national security or attempt to address the issues in it. And I knew we wouldn't be able to avoid the topic of the day, and I don't think we should, although we are talking about something more broad than the effort by Israel, backed by the United States, to try once again to flog the Arabs into docility, an approach that has been tried on many occasions over many years and has never worked. Perhaps this time will prove to be the miraculous exception.
One question I hope we will get to in the course of the discussion is to what extent opinion in the region still makes distinctions between the United States and Israel, because we seem to have become totally identified with the Israelis and their policies. This has practical consequences; I'll just mention one obvious one.
When we planned a non-combatant evacuation from Lebanon, we couldn't use the normal methodology, which you have all seen over the years elsewhere. The Marines couldn't go ashore and secure a perimeter, and safely escort people out because they would very likely have been seen as allies of the Israelis and treated accordingly. Therefore the Lebanese Army secured a beach, and a very small group of lightly armed Marines assisted the passengers, or are assisting passengers onto a landing craft.
This is a reminder that public opinion and the distinctions it makes ultimately do create security environments, even for military operations. And various theories about public opinion are constantly tested. In effect at the moment, the entire Israeli strategy rests on theories of public opinion, and that is that if you terrorize Lebanese sufficiently, their government will go into South Lebanon and do what the Israeli ground forces really can't do at acceptable costs, namely search and destroy; collect the weapons that Hezbollah has.
So we have this odd strategy. Having failed to do anything to build the capacity of the Lebanese government to enforce its sovereignty, the Israelis, with our blessing, are now destroying Lebanon in order to extend its sovereignty, and we hope the Lebanese who don't have the capacity to go into the south and do - enforce their sovereignty - will somehow be empowered by bombing to do that. And all will end well, and there will be no Hezbollah in the south.
So the strategy rests on a theory of what Lebanese public opinion will do, and what it will force the government to do. I find it a very questionable theory, but who knows. As I say, this may be the occasion that proves that the previous 49 attempts which failed were the exception and that this time it will work.
Brian, you may now tell us why all of that is nonsense.
BRIAN KATULIS: (Chuckles.) I don't necessarily disagree with all of that.
First, it's an honor to be here this morning with all of you in this discussion. And at the outset, I would like to come clean and expose my own biases. We all have our biases and I think a full disclosure is in order. I have a very strong bias for empirical evidence and grounding perspectives in reality.
MR. FREEMAN: Uh-oh
MR. KATULIS: And this may seem like stating the obvious -
MR. FREEMAN: You are into reality-based analysis.
MR. KATULIS:This may seem like stating the obvious, but I raise it for two reasons: First for this complex issue that we have today, Middle East views of the United States, there is a flood of analysis and impressionistic analyses colored by the subjective views of analysts, who are often personally disconnected from events and the people on the ground. All too often, analysts project their own paradigms and what the Middle East is thinking, and what people in the Middle East is thinking without sufficient empirical evidence.
I think we got a great example this morning. Shibley raised, the public strongly supports Hezbollah. Another Middle East expert, somebody who worked in the Clinton administration, was a prominent figure in policy - I was in a discussion with him a few nights ago, and he said the Arab public has rejected Hezbollah's provocative actions.
So we have got a lot of subjective analysis going on. And you see it in the media; you see it in some of the op-eds. What we need a little bit more of is empirical evidence. You know, in the case of Hezbollah, I think the reality actually lies somewhere in between. It may be a little bit of both, favorable, unfavorable, and we need to delve into the nuances. And that is why I have a great deal of admiration for the work that Dr. Telhami has done in terms of polling, and the work that Jon and Milton have done in terms of providing us the historical and political context.
The second reason why I think we need sound empirical evidence relates to our current U.S. policy in the Middle East and an inclination among our top leaders to reject most measure of public sentiment, and move beyond a view of the world as they see it. I have been told by several analysts currently working in the U.S. government who prepare assessments for our leaders - and when they try to incorporate polls and broader views of the public, the reaction from the highest levels is I don't care and I don't want to know.
There is a disinclination here to listen to what is going on I think at the very senior levels. And we have been operating for the past several years with a faith-based Middle East policy led by a leader and experts who see the world as they wish, dream, and hope it might be rather the reality, and a grim, complex reality.
So I think for America to make the adjustments in its policy in the region, in a policy that has gotten us so far off track, I think we need to broaden our knowledge and have a dose of reality. There is no excuse for sticking our head in the sand and the ignorance and naïveté of our current leaders has been part of what has gotten us into the mess in the Middle East.
I want to focus just on two points this morning: One, what is the standing of the U.S. in the Middle East, and what should we do about it is the second one. First, on our standing: From 2000, 2005, I directed public opinion research projects in about two-dozen countries, first working with Stan Greenberg and then working with many different organizations like Freedom House and NDI. After 2003, my projects focused on Iraq, Egypt, Kuwait, and Morocco. I want to make reference to those projects in my central proposition here.
But the central proposition I have about the U.S., its image in the Middle East, is that the Bush administration strategy for the Middle East has not only undermined our image as I think Dr. Telhami has demonstrated, it has weakened our vital national security interests. The Bush administration's strategy for freedom and using freedom, and advancing democracy to try to defeat terrorism has backfired in a dangerous way, in part because they have narrowly focused on a definition of democracy that focuses on elections.
And as a consequence, you have seen terrorists, rather than being defeated, empowered and emboldened in groups that continue to use violence in Lebanon, Iraq, and other places as a means for political change. So as a result, the Middle East is not substantially more democratic or free. You can look at the Freedom House scales and measures, and there hasn't been significant advances, and the countries in the region continue to be plagued by many forms of terrorism, and the U.S. image has gone downhill. The returns have not been worth the investments and the losses.
The most vivid failure is in Iraq. The images of the purple fingers of Iraqi voters have faded rapidly in the months of bloodshed and increased sectarian violence, and possibly a civil war. In 2003, I saw up close the impact that U.S. policy was having on Iraqis. In June and July of 2003, I went to Iraq, helped Iraqis set up a research structure to listen to Iraqi public opinion. This was done for the National Democratic Institute with the goal of trying to understand Iraqi public views on democracy, freedom, and the efforts to the U.S. toward those ends.
And at that early stage in June, July 2003, we concluded that we had already passed the point of being seen by Iraqis as liberators, if we ever were, and were seen as occupiers. And also at that point, what analysts here in Washington was saying was a lack of organization and planning on the post-war reconstruction fund, was interpreted by most Iraqis that we talked to, our research has talked to, as perfect planning; that we were doing this to them and it was intentional. I have five minutes.
So at that early stage, several Iraqis believed that the United States had planned the chaos. And this will lead me to a broader theme that I think is terribly important in terms of what has happened over the last three or four years. A lot of Iraqis could not believe a country that is so obviously powerful as America couldn't be able to do what it wanted to do. Most Iraqis felt the United States was in the country for its own interests and not to help the Iraqis.
We had several quotes here. And at this early stage from the research, we had a man, a Shi'a say - a Shi'a man from Najaf say, are they occupiers or are they not occupiers, that is my question. When Abdul Karim Qassim came and took over Iraq, he organized the ministries in 15 days, and he was an Iraqis. These guys are American and we are living in a new modern age. Why are these things going this way?
And even in the Kurdish areas, there was some sort of skepticism. Though public attitudes are fairly favorable towards the U.S., there was a sense of, what is the U.S. doing for us? Why are they still here? There must be a lot of hidden things. A very deep sense of occupation and a narrative of empire, occupation, and imperialism I think was the consequence.
What President Bush aspired to be, a bold leader who brought transformational change to the Middle East, who sparked major advances in freedom, has resulted actually in directly undermining our interests in stability in the region, and spreading a narrative of imperialism and occupation that has gone to other countries in the research in Kuwait and Egypt.
When we listened to ordinary Kuwaitis and Egyptians, we were hearing things like America wants to occupy the Arab world indirectly. In Egypt a woman told us these people make up any excuse, these Americans, to invade and occupy any country. So again, the stated intent of our leader was expanding freedom and democracy, but the perception in Iraq and in the region was the exact opposite confirming a lot of what Shibley had said.
I would propose - and I'm going to skip over what I think we should do to correct this - but I would propose there is also perhaps a new narrative or a new paradigm, perhaps a hypothesis that Shibley can test in his most recent polls. And you see this press, and you hear from this from opinion leaders, and I heard this in my most recent trip to the Middle East - a new narrative of incompetence on the part of the U.S. and a narrative of indifference, in part because after three, three-and-a-half years of so many mistakes in Iraq, people trying to figure out why; why can't the United States get it right.
Also after Katrina and the Hurricane Katrina, when you looked at the response in the Arab press and some of the cartoons - and again, anecdotal information, where this notion of a superpower maybe does not have its act together - previously when I had lived in the Middle East in the 1990s, when the dominant narrative was the U.S. is powerful and all-controlling, we may have already slipped in terms of that. And maybe that's a good thing; maybe it's a bad thing, but I think this narrative of incompetence.
A second narrative I think that could be the result and a perception of the U.S. of what is going on in Lebanon right now is indifference, indifference and inaction in terms of not being involved in diplomatically, whereas in the past, before we had served as a prominent mediator to a lot of these disputes. We have unilaterally taken ourselves out of the ball game.
I think there are several things that we could do about it. I have three specific prescriptions - how do we change our image in the Arab world. I think it's terribly damaged and in need of serious repair, but we can't talk ourselves out of this situation. As a practical matter, I don't think we'll be able to do much in the short term in terms of affecting broader sentiment. I think this is a long-term five-to-10-year project that isn't just about sending Karen Hughes to lecture Saudi women about their rights; it is about making integrated changes in our policies and communicating them a little bit differently.
I'll reserve the three concrete ideas I think for further discussion because I think the discussion should be about where do we go from here. I think clearly there is a lot of consensus that our image has been damaged. Some of those wounds are self-inflicted, but I think our country can do a lot better. So thank you.
MR. FREEMAN: Thank you very, very much.
You, like Shibley, referred to Iraq as a dominant factor in the shift in ideas of the United States and the region. I think that needs to be explored both in terms of what do we do about it, and more directly in the discussion period, which is, with the exception of the brilliant analyses we have just heard, usually the most interesting part of the program.
I am just going to ask Jon to come up and give us his wisdom.
JON ALTERMAN: Thank you very much. It is not only an honor to be here, but a pleasure to look out in an audience and see so many friendly faces.
What I want to do is I think we're going to go a little bit from the specific to the more general, and I want to talk about some of the drivers of their public opinion and the way in which they relate to government action, and the way in which in some ways the constrain government action, and the way in which in some ways they constrain government action.
What I think we're losing sight of again is what a dramatic change a pluralistic media environment is for the Middle East compared to the rules of governance before. It used to be that you knew basically what your government wanted you to know. When television arose in the Middle East in the 1960s and '70s, the national television stations were all national television stations.
They were controlled by governments; they were controlled by information ministries. You had bureaucrats deciding what the news was. What the news was a government reader reading a government script showing often still images or file photos of the day's news. And that was the news, and governments controlled it, and governments didn't report things, and governments did report things according to their governing agenda.
Let's not forget that when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, Saudi television took three days to report it because they didn't know how to report it. Those days are gone; they are gone; there is no going back to it. We don't have that media environment at all. There is now a much more diverse media environment, and governments have a much more difficult time setting the agenda.
Governments in general continue to back virtually all of the television stations in the Middle East. Hezbollah's al-Manar is actually an exception in that there is not a real government behind it. But if you look at stations like Arabiya, Jazeera and the other stations, they all generally have government backers. But the important thing is this: They are not your governments backing it, right. If you're an Egyptian, the Egyptian government doesn't control everything you can see. If you're a Saudi, the Saudi government doesn't control everything you see.
Although government interests more broadly, individuals' governments no longer dominate the news coverage that they get. That means that that is a new game. And when you combine this game with the Internet - still very small, but important among elites, and also increasingly significant as people photocopy things they saw over the Internet and pass them around that way. I mean, everybody doesn't have to be on the Internet to be affected by the Internet.
One of the things that Iraqi insurgents have been doing is using the Internet as a way to distribute extremist materials not because everybody has access but because people can reach into a central server and pull off pamphlets, videos, and those sorts of things.
So what all of this means is that governments no longer have nearly the agenda-setting power that they had not very long ago. The government information bureaucracies are being dismantled because people are no longer paying attention to what they say and what they do. I don't think that this means that governments no longer have influence or control; they do. But suddenly they have to compete for attention; they have to compete to set the agenda; they have to do this in a competitive environment whereas they used to be able to do it in a monopolistic environment.
All that means is audiences determine what is important. Audiences determine what people pay attention to. And I think it's important in this regard not to only think about political issues in terms of political programming. I mean, one of the problems - and I am as guilty as any of us are - because we are political nerds, we all pay attention to politics narrowly. We all watch CNN or Fox or something in the States and we all watch Jazeera or Arabia in the Arab world, and we say that is sort of the environment; that is the news environment; that is what is shaping the politics.
I think there is a really important aspect of this that is not being shaped by the news programs; it is being shaped by entertainment programs, social programs, religious programs, many of which have these really interesting aspects in which they address the question of what is Arab identity. Do you have to be a Muslim to be an Arab? Do you have to be an observant Muslim to be an Arab? Who gets to determine what is observant or orthodox Islamic? I mean, who is part of this game? Do you have to be anti-American to be a good Arab? Do you have to be anti-Semitic to be a good Arab?
I mean, this is a discourse that is not limited to al Jazeera or Arabiya. It's all over the place, and the media is having this, and governments have influence, but governments no longer set that agenda; they no longer control it.
I think that is what we see when we look at the conflict that is going on today. What is this? Is this something that gets to the core of people's identities, or is this something that is happening out there? Do you have a role that extends beyond watching the images on the screen and listening to the words? How does that participation fit in? How does what you see and here affect what you do? When people start doing things, how does that affect their attitudes?
And this comes to a whole question of mobilization, the possibility that when governments lose control of the information space and the agenda space, then are people able to mobilize against the wishes of governments.
Now, by my count, there have been more than a dozen protests in the Arab world in the last couple of weeks. Some of them are clearly government orchestrated like the ones in Damascus. Others such as the apparently spontaneous gathering of 600 Lebanese in Dubai Media City seem to be much more spontaneous. And then there are some that are just harder to figure out, like thousands of people - yeah - in Oman and Sana. I mean, where does all of this come from? How does this all fit in? I don't want to give the demonstrations more credence than they deserve, but at the same time I think it's very important that we not just dismiss them.
I began by talking about sort of this government agenda-setting role, and it seems to me that one of the remarkable and really undiscussed aspects of all of this is that all of Israel's neighbors have basically signed on to the idea of co-existence, right? Governments have decided to live side by side with Israel. It's populations where a lot of those attitudes lag.
And then you have this whole question of, well, can people affect that equation; can people affect what their governments do? You can lose a lot of money betting against the governments of the Middle East because this is what they do best. They can control - they let things flare up, they tamp them down.
But the question, again, that you have to really look at is as the game changes, as the governments lose their agenda-setting role, as people are becoming more entrepreneurial outside of governments, more transnational outside of governments, how does that create opportunities, possibilities? How does that change the way governments react and the way nongovernmental groups react?
I think the fact is we don't know, but we have to look awfully hard at what is happening on the margins; what kinds of websites are being set up; what kinds of SMS are being sent around; what kinds of things governments don't want to have happen are happening. Where do governments start to be losing control?
I mean, this is a process - Brian talked about how the process of rebuilding American trust in the region is a five- to 10-year process; we're in this process of dynamism and adjustment on the parts of both governments and nongovernmental leaders that is also is going to take five to 10 years or more.
But I think this is where Middle East politics really start to shift. This is where the possibilities are for a whole different game. It is not necessarily a better game. It is not a game where everybody comes out of it and loves the United States. But it is the game that is going, and if you don't play that game, you're going to lose.
My bet continues to be that most Arab governments are going to learn to play this game successfully, but I think some won't. And it's my bet that over the same five- to 10-year period, there are going to be some very, very interesting things happening, not because governments want them to happen but because the multiplicity of creative entrepreneurial people, using different kinds of tactics, are going to be able to actually effect the way Arab politics have worked for the last 60 years. Thank you.
MR. FREEMAN: Thank you. Very stimulating. I think by focusing us on the change in the information environment and the loss of control over public opinion by governments, you're restating the theme that Shibley began with, which is the gap between government and public opinion. Given this gap and the demands of the United States that governments support, or at least not oppose, our policies - these policies can, in fact, only lead to increased repression.
If there has been a kind of democratization of public opinion, or if there is a growing freedom to incite and mobilize politically, whatever the government says, then governments either have to learn, as you say, to control these freedoms, or we will see some interesting consequences.
We all understand that we're not talking about contemporary events, especially today, but the present provides useful reminders that whatever the view of Hezbollah's actions was on day one, this is a dynamic situation. And if Israel does overplay its hand - and it may already have done it - it can very rapidly shift opinion from condemnation of Hezbollah as a rash, uncoordinated, adventurist actor whose actions are contrary to the overall Arab interest, to a different view, the one that Hezbollah originally wanted to make. Hezbollah's point was that, while everyone else just talks, they are prepared actually to act out of solidarity with Palestinians.
So I think it's a very interesting set of ideas that are being discussed here, and I can't think of anyone better than Milton Viorst to bring us to a conclusion in the discussion.
MILTON VIORST: Well, I'm going to change the pace a little bit because the more I have covered the Middle East - and I guess I've been covering the Middle East, now, for some 40 years in one form or another - the more I have been drawn back to understanding something in the history of this region.
And I really do believe that we have here two civilizations which we have to understand, and I also believe that this latest eruption - and I'm not even - this was even before last week. But I believe that the war in Iraq is simply the latest eruption in a conflict that has lasted since the time of Mohammed nearly 1400 years ago.
And I think we - unless we understand more about the differences in ideas, values, and all the rest, we're not going to - we're not quite - we're not going to get it. And, certainly - and, certainly, we have a government now that isn't getting it either.
I love this New Yorker cartoon which I cut out quite a while ago. And it's a picture here - I know you can't see it - but it's a picture here of two couples sitting around in bikinis smoking cigarettes and drinking martinis with a palm tree swinging above them. And one of them says, "I think that if these Islamic fundamentalists got to know us, they'd really like us." (Laughter.) Well, I don't think that's true.
But I think we have to understand that what we have had - and this what this latest book I've written argues - is that we have to understand this thing in terms of a long-term conflict between Christian civilization and Islamic civilization, neither one necessarily being superior but being profoundly different and having particularly profound ends.
It began when Mohammed and Mohammed's successors didn't simply - didn't simply conquer the whole Mediterranean basin, but the Mediterranean basin that they conquered was a Christian basin. The lands they overran in North Africa and then in Spain and then moving up northward into Byzantium were Christian lands. And so what we had here was a replacement of a Christian civilization in the Mediterranean with an Islamic civilization, which lasts to - in very large measure, to this very day.
And one of the arguments I keep making is that what we are dealing with here is profound historical memory on the parts of both of these people. Historical memory is not the same as history; history is something reasonably objective, a search for truth. Historical memory is what we, on both sides, selectively recall and factor into our minds; it's the DNA, I think, by which civilizations function. And it is why - it is why Arabs behave in very large measure by - like Arabs and - and Westerners do like Westerners.
And when, for example, the great historian Gibbon wrote in "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" - and you could feel the fear in this. So we have not just Arab fear but Western fear. He said if Arabs had won the Battle of Poitiers in 732 - the Battle of Poitiers was the furthest point that the Arab - Mohammed's Arab armies reached in an effort to conquer Europe - if they Arabs had won the Battle of Poitiers in 732, the Koran would now be the basis of teaching, not the Bible, in Oxford.
So we are dealing with, I think, deeply rooted ideas here, and I suspect that the ideas have never - are not more deeply rooted than they are in the mind of George Bush and some of the people around us. Kevin Phillips, in his last book, tells us in the month prior to sending the troops into Iraq, Bush boasted to his entourage that he read every morning from the sermons of an evangelical Scottish preacher who accompanied the British Army in its march on Jerusalem in 1917.
Now, this is - this is - this is part of the struggle, and I think George Bush - and we don't like that. As Americans we are uncomfortable talking about conflicts between Christianity and Islam. But until we understand it I think - I think we are in trouble. I think, probably George Bush understands it better than most of us who take pride in the secularism of our thinking.
This - this struggle re-erupted sometime about the French - at the time of the French Revolution when Napoleon, for the first time in several hundred years, sent an army into the Islamic world and overthrew them, which was the beginning of the movement that we call imperialism. Well, I think there was a - there was almost a year in which Britain and France, the two great imperial powers decided what they were going to do because the Ottoman Empire stood in the way of their conquest of the region. And when the Ottomans fell in World War I, the whole region was opened up once again to the West, but I have to emphasize the Christian West.
I think it's important that this was, perhaps, a moment - maybe it was the last moment - where American credibility had an opportunity to assert itself. American democratic values had an opportunity to assert themselves. Woodrow Wilson, in entering the war on the side of the British and the French, promised the British - promised the Arabs what the British and the French had promised them but clearly were in the process of defaulting upon, and that is that the United States would assure the self-determination of the Arab peoples.
And this is something that is deeply imbedded in what I call the historical memory of the Arabs; they don't forget that. They don't forget the betrayal that Britain and France imposed upon them in setting up so-called mandates an imperial system in the Middle East. And they can't - and they can't forget the fact that the United States wasn't there when they needed us.
The opportunity perhaps occurred again after World War II when we had genuinely promised, again, that there would be an end to the imperial system. But at that point the Cold War intruded itself, and once again the architect of the Cold War in the Middle East was - and I've been doing some research on this lately - a character who is remarkably like George Bush in his beliefs, and that's John Foster Dulles who established our - our Cold War policy in the Middle East.
The Arabs said to the United States, hey look; imperialism is over. We need time to form our institutions. We have not been a free people for a thousand years. We need - we need a period calm so that we can do this. And Dulles said, that's not relevant; the United States said, that's not relevant. What we have here is a struggle of good against evil; it's us against the Soviet Union, and, you're either on our side or against us.
And so we went through this horrible sequence of events that - that are marked by names like the Aswan Dam Crisis and the Suez Invasion of 1956 and the Baghdad Pact and the rest. And, in all of these, we simply told the Arabs that if you are not with us - there is no such thing as neutrality; there is no such thing as being concerned with your own problems; what you have to do is follow us.
Well, it didn't work. It didn't work, and when the Cold War was over - and, perhaps another opportunity, a smaller opening occurred - what we did was to make sure that the oil resources of the Middle East did not fall into the hands of Saddam Hussein. And I think what we had then was again a lost opportunity if - if, indeed, we thought it was of any importance to have the Arabs not as our enemies. And I think the three speakers who preceded me have made quite clear that we are behaving contrary to our own interest in doing so.
Let me just quote one brief - make one brief quote here because it indicates what Shibley and Jon and Mr. Brian have pointed out to us on a more contemporary basis. Shortly - at the time that President Bush was parading on the deck of the aircraft carrier, talking about mission accomplished, rather coincidentally he had a meeting with French President Chirac.
And Chirac had fought against the Arabs in Algeria during the Arab - during the Algerian war of independence. And he tried to persuade the president that the game wasn't yet over with. And Chirac said that Arab nationalism was a rising danger; it was something that the United States had failed to take into account in Iraq, and it was looming, and it was not going to let us go.
And the president replied, "I cannot disagree with you more, Jacques. Iraqi's love us. We liberated them from a bloody dictator. The very few who fight against us are either remnants of the old regime who are responsible for massive massacres and the use of torture chambers or foreign terrorists who hate life itself."
Well, we have a president - we have a government that went into war in total ignorance, but I think, nonetheless, out of a belief, out of an impulsion, out of a dynamism that - that occurs within the framework of this very, very long struggle, and both sides, if there is going to be peace, have to get over that.
MR. FREEMAN: Thank you. So we have had Milton returning to the theme of faith-based Middle East policy - armed evangelism, in effect. And I suspect that - just as I'm his direct descendant - half of those in the audience are direct descendants of Charles Martel -- who did the Battle of Poitiers.
MR. VIORST: Really?
MR. FREEMAN: Well, he had lots of descendants.
I think that Milton's is a very valuable narrative. I have wondered myself, in the case of the United States, however, whether we were not coming rather late to the concept of Christendom. Our view of the conflict in this prism may reflect more about internal struggles in our own country than anything else. I always thought our most endearing characteristic was not our historical memory but our amnesia. I mean, we - as illustrated by the high school student who asked me once whether the Vietnam War was before or after the Spanish-American War.
But the fact is that we have been having a struggle between secularism and evangelism in this country. And perhaps the concept of Christendom, which inspired the Crusades, has now finally become part of our philosophy. It is possible to adopt or create myths rather than merely inherit them. And I fear, Milton, that you may be very right that there's a good deal connecting us now to a long and tragic history on both sides. Clearly, on the other side, there has never been a problem with remembering the past.
Well, with these remarks we open now for comments, questions, and discussion. We don't have a microphone out there. I don't know quite how we want to handle this. I would suggest that you come to the aisle. Or put your hand up first; identify yourself. I'll make a note, and I'll call you to stand up and make a comment or ask a question. Or if you can't get up for some reason, you can speak from your seat. Try to keep the comments short or the questions short and succinct. If you can direct them to someone in particular, that's great. And please tell us who you are even if you think we should all know or we all do. So, please, would someone like to start? Yes, sir.
Q: My first question is to Professor Telhami.
Mustafa Malik (sp) is my name. (Off mike.) You alluded to the fact that the governments of Egypt and Jordan and Saudi Arabia - it's very interesting that they criticize Hezbollah - what about - (off mike). Now, does it look to you that the showdown is coming, and the pro-American governments they are - they are finally - Israel, the pro-American Arab governments, and maybe - (off mike) - because Hezbollah and other groups - they also don't like them as much. Is that a line up is coming? And secondly, if Hezbollah survives this intact or whatever it is, what does that do to the Israel relations with Iran? It was - (off mike) - cover that Palestinians but not the rockets?
MR. FREEMAN: Shibley.
MR. TELHAMI: There are a lot of reasons why these governments have taken these positions. And I think, you know, a lot of people are asking that question, is this part of a new Sunni-Shi'a divide because the Hezbollah is Shi'a. And I want to say something about that because I think this part of the debate; it's going to be increasingly part of the debate.
There's no question that there is some Sunni-Shi'a divide. I mean, that - particularly pertaining to Iran and what's happening in Iraq, and there's been a shift in the balance of power. And I think a lot of Arab countries are looking at that. It's so much, you know, ethnically, but in terms of how the political coalitions are going to emerge, whether that's going to be part of the way alliances are going to emerge in the region. So they're taken into account.
But I want to say that, in this particular crisis, you cannot explain it by the Sunni-Shi'a divide, and let me tell you why. First, I think the Egyptian, and the Saudi government, particularly, began taking a position even blaming Hamas prior to the Lebanon escalation.
And, you know, Abdul-Rahman Al-Rashid, who is a well-connected columnist, you know, speaks for some members of the family indirectly, wrote a very bold column, you know, accusing Hamas of bringing this upon itself and saying don't expect help from the Arab governments before. They had taken a bold position because they felt that a lot of the militant Islamist groups were dragging in a path that they don't want to go, and I think that's a collective decision that includes Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan - and more - not just - but particularly the ones that have strong relationships with the U.S.
Second, I think, you know, that people - when people think about this Sunni-Shi'a divide, first you have to look at it in the point of view of grassroots politics. I mean, no one can possibly argue that the King of Jordan, who is more comfortable here than in the tribes of - in Jordan, is more Sunni than his Muslim Brotherhood or that President Mubarak is more Sunni than his Muslim Brotherhood. And the Muslim Brotherhood is - is supporting Hezbollah in this crisis, not going against it. That's not what the grassroots religious momentum is coming from. People are not - are not doing it that way.
Third, I think in the case of the Saudis particularly, I think they have a bit of a sense of ownership with the Lebanese government. This is a government where they've invested tremendously to try to bring it about. They have a very close relationship with it. The have spent a lot with the late Prime Minister Hariri and since trying to bring Lebanon back along the lines of their vision of the Middle East. And Hezbollah is undermining and threatening that in the short term. So all of these, I think, were factors that go beyond that.
Now, the question is whether this is a - something that they can sustain, particularly if Hezbollah emerges a winner or is seen in the Arab world as a political winner, and if their public opinion is far more furious with them than it has been, particularly if there is even more civilian casualties in Lebanon. That's a big question; it's a risk they're taking. And I think that's why the United States and others are betting that there interests now are to see Hezbollah defeated rather than it be successful, politically at least, to emerge where there's no sense of victory for Hezbollah.
But it is also in their interest not to see a lot of devastation because in the end, not only is that going to sour public opinion against them, but it is in their interest to figure out a way to bring back the state of Lebanon, which is going to cost far more to bring back if we continue in the route of escalation.
MR.FREEMAN: I think that's a very sound analysis. Jon, do you want to add something?
MR. ALTERMAN: Let me just add one thought. And let me, because the Anwar Sadat Professor didn't mention Anwar Sadat, invoke Anwar Sadat. Anwar Sadat decided there was no percentage in being an enemy of the United States, right. He decided in the 1970s. And I think all the Arab governments had basically decided there's no percentage in being an enemy of the United States. Even the Syrians - you keep seeing signs that they're desperate for attention so that they can stop being an enemy of the United States.
That then puts the governments against the agenda of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah who see no interest in being a friend of the United States because the governments look at financing, they look at military support, they look at support against internal insurgent groups. They all say, why don't we want the Americans' help? Why don't we want to be with the West? We have similar interests in all of these things. And they swallow American foreign policy about which many people in these governments have a lot of problems.
It seems to me that what's happening is it's highlighting in many ways the success of American diplomacy to bring the governments under our umbrella but the failure to reach beyond the governments, the failure to build constituencies for an orientation toward the United States. I don't think we're at a break point because of it, but it seems to me that that's how you have to look at it. And you have to look at it in terms of Sadat's calculations, you know, before he went to Jerusalem in 1977.
MR. FREEMAN: You certainly have a heightened risk that, if there were a sharp discontinuity in government anywhere, a very anti-American opinion could take charge.
I would like, just in the case of the Saudis, to add only a few points to what Shibley said. First, the Taif Accords, by which the Lebanese Civil War was ended, were brokered by Saudi Arabia. And one element of those accords was the disbandment of militias. So the Saudis have had a sense of frustration about the failure to disband Hezbollah. This predisposes them, along with the fact that they've been aligned in Lebanon with others to - to be very skeptical about Hezbollah.
Second, Hezbollah, in its broader incarnation, has carried out terrorist actions in Saudi Arabia. And this has simply buttressed the view of Hezbollah which I used to hear when I lived there where various, very senior members of the royal family called it Hezb ash Shaitan - not the party of God but the party of Satan.
So there is a lot of history here, which predisposes the Saudi authorities to be very skeptical and, indeed, opposed to Hezbollah. And I think the interesting question will be, as Jon said and Shibley said, how long they can sustain this against public opinion as the catastrophe in Lebanon deepens. I don't know. Brian, did you want to add something to this? Okay.
MR. VIORST: I guess I would add is that the one element that the Sunni's and Shi'ites can agree upon is opposition - and even - and in the case of Iraq, even in some considerable measure the Kurds because you can see this just a step underneath the surface is that what they do not want is continued American domination and what American influence in the region has brought. And it has brought simply increasing amounts of trouble, certainly since 2000, but it wasn't remarkably better before that, though it was a little better.
And I think what we may do is defer more struggle between Sunnis and Shi'ites, but the fact is we have handed these two factions the one issue on which they can agree. And I think what we have - what we have done is assured certain unity within the Arab world that otherwise wouldn't be there.
MR. FREEMAN: It is interesting in that context that the Iraqi client in government that we helped you install has been on the side of Hezbollah. And some elements like Muqtada al-Sadr have been very outspoken on that subject.
Yes, sir.
Q: Mike Fuchs, Center for American Progress.
Dr. Alterman, you spoke on creating environments where individuals can hear different perspectives so that they will then discuss them and then act, and then have those actions reflect their beliefs. Could you discuss that a little bit more in depth from a policy perspective?
MR. ALTERMAN: Yeah, sure. Maybe I shouldn't be talking to somebody from the Center for American Progress about how you set up an activist network. But I have a friend who did some fascinating doctoral research in sociology on anti-abortion movements. And he went to four different cities and spoke to people about how did you get involved.
And he found the more work he did on this that people are sort of oriented toward a view, but they don't consider it a core part of their identity. And it's when people take action, when people participate, that people start to really feel a stake, and when that idea starts to move into the center of their identity. That is how activist networks start. But the interesting part of this, it seems to me, is it's not the strength of belief that leads to action; it's the action that leads to the strength of belief.
Now, let's think back to a few years ago in the Arab world, Ariel Sharon after a horrific bombing in Israel moved back into the West Bank. There is a military action in Jamim (ph) that killed more than 50 people. And you saw an outbreak of boycotts of Israeli goods throughout the Middle East, boycotts that were led by women and children.
MR. FREEMAN: Actually, boycotts of American goods.
MR. ALTERMAN: American and Israeli goods, or goods that had sources - whatever. That strikes me as really important for this reason. We don't think of women and children as being politically active, but women and children did become politically active, active in their daily lives in a way that deepened their identification with opposition toward what the Israelis were doing, toward U.S. support or acquiescence in what Israel was doing. That sort of dynamic, right, was drive by faxes, was driven by television advertisements. I mean, there is something real going on that the ability of people to respond to reach out is changing, and people I think - as the information action nexus gets more complex and deeper, I think there is a lot of interesting opportunity.
I just - this morning I saw the most graphic images I have ever seen in my life on the web on a site put up by some Lebanese - I don't believe they are Shi'a at all - burned bodies, halves of bodies - absolutely incredible. These are the kinds of images that I think are going to move some people to action, discrete action in their own lives, that is going to move beyond.
Let me just - I know I'm taking a lot of time. Let me just - one little, little thing. I have been really interested in Amorhowi (ph) for a while. He is a televangelist based in Egypt. What Amorhowi does is he gets people to do little discrete things in their lives that identify them with what he's doing. They stop smoking. They put plants on their roofs to help beautify cities. They help somebody find a job. He has got tote bags that have written on them in English, I'm a maker, not a taker, right.
This is all about individual actions, talking to people as individuals and getting collective change out of it. And I think that is the world we are going into in the Middle East, not just people saying we all support the Arab view and taking a view, but a multiplicity of views, people taking individual action in response to what they see, fueling identification, and the means it's a different way that politics work.
MR. KATULIS: I can only add to that and further amplify the research we did in 2003, 2004 in Iraq, Egypt, and some other places pinpointed top of mind from what ordinary Egyptians and Moroccans and Kuwatis were saying - was a tremendous transformation in the media landscape, which was affecting their ability to first think about events and then, second, act in a different way. And I think we're already there. You say we're on the path; we are already there.
And when you look at freedom and democracy, and the spread of freedom and democracy in the Middle East, I would say that media transformation and technological transformation have been a much more positive impact towards that end to enable civic activism and other things as opposed to, again, the focus of what I was talking about, the focus on electoral processes.
And I think we need a tremendous amount of more research done by you to understand the younger generation who have grown up with this access to the Internet, to SMS messaging. I don't know if you have been in the Middle East recently, but you sit in a meeting with younger Arab men and women, and it's a bit annoying because everybody is SMSing each other while they are in the discussion. And it's changing the nature of discourse, and it actually I think is fostering.
I mean, I think we had high - some people had high hopes in the 1990s about the impact of Arab TV and satellite television and what it would bring, but I think there is a sense of openness that can be exploited I think for positive reform change, and also on the other side by extremist groups. And we are not in the game, I would argue - the American government is really not in the game with Al Hurra and Radio Sawa, which is strategically irrelevant in this new landscape.
MR. FREEMAN: I think Jon Alderman was very kind in not dwelling on the impact of Fox TV in the Middle East. You know, if you watch a hundred hours of Al Hurra and somehow begin to become persuaded of the justice of the American viewpoint, and then watch 10 minutes of Fox, you're convinced the United States is a racist and bigoted country. That is the way it comes across out there.
Yes, ma'am, in the back.
Q: (Off mike)
MR. FREEMAN: Brian was all along going to give us three suggestions on how to alter public perceptions.
MR. KATULIS: Well, it's not only about altering public perceptions. I think if you go back to my proposition that the U.S. over the last - the U.S. over the last three or four years has harmed its own national security interests, in addition to harming its own image in the Middle East, and the two are intertwined. I think there are no quick fixes. I think you can't simply talk your way out of the problem, and the whole that we have dug ourselves into. I think you need to change policies ultimately, and you can disaggregate the two.
I think a lot of it - first of all, for a lot of folks in the region, not withstanding this new crisis, is related to Iraq, and what are we doing in Iraq. And the open-ended commitment in my view, and just when you look at public opinion in the region and in Iraq itself would like to hear a clear statement from the U.S. government that it has no intention to stay there forever, that it is ultimately going to leave.
And I think - you know, I have a proposal that I wrote with Larry Korb at the Center for American Progress. I think we need some of a responsible, phased draw down of our military presence there that helps us fulfill our moral obligations to the Iraqi people, but ultimately makes a shift away from a policy that I think is not helping our interests or the Iraqis' interests; it makes a shift toward greater diplomatic and political mechanisms to help bring stability to Iraq.
So I think number one would be let's change the course and change direction in Iraq because it's not, I would argue, serving our interests. It is fostering a whole lot of moral hazard, not only among Iraqi leaders, but actors in the region. And we need to make that shift first by declaring we are not going to stay there forever; second, by responding to what I think have been clear signals from the elected Iraqi government that they would like us to leave as soon as practically possible.
And then, third, I think calling it like it is. Whether we call the conflict, the internal conflict in Iraq a civil war or not I think is a bit of semantics. I mean, when you looked at the 14,000 Iraqis that were killed in the first six months, 40 percent of them in May and June, and we have got to move beyond our talking point and spin on freedom and democracy and recognize that Iraq really is an ethnocracy, and a failed state with a major internal conflict. So we have got to make that one shift.
I think two other ideas, one related to Lebanon. And I think we have a lot of aspirations to be a force for stability and progress in the Middle East. We have not led - we have not met those aspirations.
And I think in a very real way in the Palestinian authority, in Lebanon and other places, again, the focus on elections without helping build institutions in the long-term work - a lot of the things that we demand of the Palestinian authority security forces, and the Lebanese army, they are clearly incapable of doing. And what I think we need is some sort of program to help stabilize these institutions so that they can regain or actually capture a monopoly on the use of force in their own societies. We have very weak governments in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Authority.
Third, I think, you know, in addition to some of these policy shifts, we need to take greater care about how we talk and communicate our ideas. The defense science board on communications said that policy and strategic communications cannot be separated. And I actually think there has been some improvements when you see Alberto Fernandez from the State Department actually finally appearing on Al Jazeera after a self-imposed ban by U.S. administration officials.
And this goes back to a point and a comment that I made. I think a lot of what we do on Radio Sawa and Al Hurra is strategically irrelevant in the new media landscape, and what we need to do is engage more in the debates in the environments, and present our ideas. But it's not about - again, back to my first point - talking our way out of this; you need to have serious policy change. It's got to start I think with Iraq. It's got to also involve some shifts in terms of reengaging on the Middle East peace process in a different way.
MR. FREEMAN: Jon?
MR. ALTERMAN: I agree with much of what Brian said, and I just want to highlight a hazard that I think we keep falling into, which is we keep thinking that a lot of this is about messaging. So we get some new undersecretary over at the State Department, and she goes out, and she - for the last three times - she goes out and talks to people and finds out that maybe it's really complicated. And messaging is relatively easy because you can do it with a small team in the undersecretary suite and it doesn't mean that you have to deal with thousands of people in the U.S. government bureaucracy who might be alienated by what you're doing.
The fact is there are a lot of people in the former USIA who spend much of their day complaining about how much better things were under USIA. We have to fundamentally rethink what our goals are. We have to fundamentally rethink what our tools are. We have to fundamentally rethink how we can measure what we're doing and what we are trying to do.
We don't have a strategy. And what seems to be happening from my perspective is we keep getting new undersecretaries who understand it's really complicated, and they get around and they look around in SA-44, and they say I can't work with these people; I don't know what they think they are doing. I am just going to work with my team and we are going to work out better messaging. That is the not the problem. We have got thousands of people doing this stuff around the world. We have to figure out what they are doing, what they should be doing, how to train them to do it right because this really matters. And sadly I think we keep having leadership that acts as if it doesn't matter and they are wrong.
MR. FREEMAN: We had a brief moment in which we believed that history had ended, and therefore there was no need to continue the arguments that had driven history for the preceding 30,000 years.
MR. VIORST: This issue of America withdrawal from Iraq I think remains a key, a key concern. It seems that most Americans are convinced that the issue is when we will withdraw. I don't think that Iraqis themselves are convinced that we intend to withdraw at all, and I think that there is a huge amount of evidence out there that supports them in this.
Not only are they living through the United States, but having lived through the British and the French who only left when they were driven out, and who did not leave voluntarily, but the fact that we are investing such a huge amount of money in our civilian and military facilities in Iraq makes Iraqis say, come on; you're kidding. The United States is not going to leave voluntarily, and they have a very strong argument when they say that. And when they do say that, that simply undermines our credibility even more.
MR. TELHAMI: Yeah, I just - there are a couple of the things I really want to say because, I mean, agree with the sense that the public diplomacy as such isn't going to do it, and in the short term, you cannot do it, and when it's about policies. The real question is what is it we are talking about, about policies. If we are talking about - we had this gap that Milton talked about, the civilizational gap, or if we are talking about some profound change pertaining to the Arab-Israeli conflict - is that really doable. And I want to address that just briefly. And I unfortunately have to go right after. But I want to talk about the first - this notion of civiliazational divide.
Of course there is a civilizational divide, and there is no question about it. There is also the civilizational divide between America and India, between America and Japan, between America and China. There has always been a civilizational divide across the world. There has also always been a civilizational divide between in some ways Europe and the Middle East. The real question isn't the civilizational divide; the question is what explains conflict. It's not what explains whether you have divide or not. And is this really a central factor in explaining conflict.
And I think that if you look - I'm a student of conflict broadly. I'm not just a student of the Middle East; I study conflict in general. The vast majority of conflicts in the world are within civilization. Most people in the world are killed in civil wars. Even today - look at Iraq; what is the civilizational clash? I mean, most people are being killed - they are killing each other.
So I think that we really have to be very careful in identifying this civilizational clash as the core reason for the conflict, even if it's there. That is not an explanation. I think that there is a clash, and it's not a clash of civilization; it's a clash of prism. I call it the prism through which one side looks at the other. Even within civilization you have this clash prism.
Americans are looking at the Arab and Muslim world since 9/11 through the prism of terrorism, the prism of 9/11. We label groups, terrorist groups, by virtue of the fact that they engage in terrorism. So Hamas to us is not just engaging in terrorism; it is a terrorist group. When people in the Middle East are looking at it, they see the terrorism part, but that is a small part of what they see. Their prism is looking at the occupational issue, the function and the role that Hamas is playing.
And so we have a clash of views. That clash of views has to be addressed; it's not a civilizational clash. And in the end I think policies matter a lot. And you cannot I think have successful policies unless you understand the prism through which the other side looks at you, and unless you are conscious of the narrow prism through which you look at the other because generally everyone is looking through a very narrow prism and not looking at the rest of the world, particularly in environment of conflict.
And I think the fact that policies matter is obvious. Look at Iraq. We are not talking about what should we do now. We can disagree or agree on what should be done now. But no one would doubt if in fact after the Iraq war, even though the vast majority of people opposed it, had in fact the outcome been a vibrant, democratic, stable, happy Iraq in which Sunnis and Shi'as are coexisting with everybody else and it's prosperous in American forces that have withdrawn. There's no question that attitudes to what America would have changed. No question.
So the issue wasn't actually even the war it just - the issue was designing a policy that works. This was a policy that didn't work, and people do punish you for it. And I think we have to - when we're drawing policies we have to draw them based on a reality and not have the amnesia that Ambassador Freeman talked about earlier in formulating our policies.
MR. FREEMAN: Milton, I think you should say a word on behalf of history.
(Laughter.)
MR. VIORST: Well, when Chas. mentioned using the world amnesia, listen, amnesia is part of memory; it's not only what you remember but what you forget, or what you chose to drive out of your memory.
And it is true, as Shibley says, that indeed we do not have the same civilization as India or China or Japan. Somehow at the moment we seem to have made accommodations to both. We have failed utterly in making accommodations to the civilization of the Arab World, the Islamic civilization. And it's becoming increasingly Islamic. It was more Arab 20 years ago; now it has spread and I wonder whether it's going to spread increasingly into the Islam of - even of Southeast Asia, which is important to take into account.
But the fact is that I do think that our historical memory toward the Islamic world, and the Islamic world's historical memory toward us, is different from the exchange of memories that takes place between us and India or Africa or others.
And we have a government which has absolutely refused to examine the sensitivities of the Arab world and then seems to be totally mystified by the time these sensitivities erupt in explosions.
The president didn't have to be terribly wise; there's a huge amount of literature on the subject of historical memory. He needed to send associates out to the nearest bookshelf and he probably could have found some things that would have told him that the Iraqis were not going to submit to this kind of - were not going to receive us with the flower throwing that Vice President Cheney told us we would receive. He refused to do that because that was not what he wanted to know.
And I'm afraid we are still in that position. Over the course of the past few days we have encountered it once more in terms of the war that goes more and more deeply into Lebanon.
MR. ALTERMAN: Can I just say -
MR. FREEMAN: I'm not sure there's as much disagreement as there appear be.
MR. VIORST: Yeah, I don't think there's a lot of disagreement on - between us on this.
MR. ALTERMAN: I think just on that last point, as somebody who was in the government right after September 11th for a year, there was a way in which people thought September 11th changed everything and disproved everything we knew. And there was a way in which the fact that the expert community hadn't predicted September 11th de-legitimized the expert community and marginalized the expert community as people we talking - were debating over what would happen in Iraq. I mean, I was - I saw this sort of every day when I was in the State Department.
I think what we're learning is in fact that history matters, that having expertise matters. But I think you also want this tension between people who think it's all the same thing over and over and over again and people who can imagine something that's very different. I think that's a useful tension. I think that tension was lost and too much of the Iraq war was planned by people who didn't want to consider alternative views because all the alternative views are the people who also didn't predict September 11th. And if they're the experts and they couldn't do that what the hell good are they?
MR. FREEMAN: I recall chairing a similar discussion of the relevance of history at Osmania University in Hyderabad in South India in 1967. And after I had asserted that - it was a comparison of Chinese, American, and India views of history and the weight of history on decision-making. And when I asserted that the Indians felt the burden of history the lightest because of cultural reasons, a gentleman in the back stood up and said, "and as for our history we are still having it." (Laughter.) So I've always taken heart from that thought.
I just want to note on Iraq, since there has been discussion both of change and of public opinion, that the most recent "Middle East Policy" contains the transcript of a very interesting discussion with Larry Korb who, with Brian, co-authored a strategy for withdrawal from Iraq. There were four different proposals in that panel for a responsible exit from Iraq We also, in the same issue, dealt with the orgy of xenophobic demagoguery that accompanied the Dubai Ports World issue and its impact on American business relationships with the Middle East.
Clyde -- first tell us who you are.
Q: Okay. I'm Clyde Prestowitz, Economic Strategy Institute.
I have two questions. The first one is Hamas and Hezbollah, why do they engage in these provocative actions now? I mean, in other words, did they miss calculate? Did they think they were just going to capture some soldiers and negotiate the prisoners - (off mike) - or did they anticipate that they would provoke Israel to massive retaliations that would shift the weight of the - (off mike). That's the first part.
Second question is it seems to me that in the history leading up to all of this, a seminal event was the failure of the Camp David and the later Taba negotiations on - (off mike). And that failure has been widely attributed in the U.S. to the idiosyncrasies of Arafat. I think a view widely in the U.S. is that the Israelis made an unbelievable offer and the Palestinians, led by Arafat, just rejected it and went back to terrorism. And I would be interested in your view of that those events and what was really happening and how that's perceived in the Arab world.
MR. FREEMAN: I don't know. Milton, do you want to - I think, Clyde, that you've introduced the subject of an entire different discussion. But dealing with it in terms of Arab opinion, I don't think Arab opinion is diametrically opposed to the views that I think you correctly attribute to most Americans on this.
MR. VIORST: Well, I think that if we - let's try to keep it an American - let's try to keep a little bit of an American focus on this, and that is while the president was proclaiming the sanctity of democracy as a process - and we can - and we watched over the most successful democratic election in the Middle East and perhaps all of history in Palestine, we just didn't like the outcome.
And I think there is some reason to believe in retrospect that we decided from the very beginning - let's say as we decided in the case of Mossadegh in 1953 that however democratic this may be we, the United States, were not going to submit to this, and our friends, the Israelis, totally agreed with it. Exactly how this process played out in what meetings we don't know and may never know, but it's quite clear that the Israelis did not - or the United States did not accommodate themselves to a democratic outcome.
And so it was inevitable. And I hate to use words like inevitable because in history there is not anything that's necessarily inevitable, but let's say it was highly likely that there was going to be a clash between the Israelis and Hamas and it occurred over the pretext, or call it if you like, the reality of the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier. None of it in even remotely in proportion to what we have since experienced, but it was some place where the whole Bush doctrine once again was subjected to scrutiny by the Arab world and found seriously wanting. Because, you know, there is no such thing as saying, well, we are in favor of elections as long as our candidates win.
We had never - we had ignored Abbas; the Israelis had ignored Abbas. There was no negotiation going on which might suggest that there was an alternative to conflict and so this transpired.
I will leave Camp David and Taba being a little bit far removed from our concerns at the movement and talk about it another time.
MR. KATULIS: Yeah, just really quickly on both points. First, on your first question, why did Hezbollah and Hamas engage in these provocations right now? I think there are serious questions about the timing but I think one simple answer that I would offer is because they could. They actually were in an environment where they did not have any kind of restraint from the states or the governing entities that should control them, and I would tie that back to American policy failure, in part, in the Middle East.
Going back to something that I said before, we were talking a lot about reform and building institutions and things like this, and a fundamental basis in my view for helping expand democracy and freedom is for there to be rule of law, and the state having a monopoly on the use of force. The Palestinian authority did not have that - didn't have it in the 1990s when I lived in Ramallah and Gaza myself, and it weakened severely. And I think one consequence of the actions we're seeing today is a weakening of the Lebanese authority.
And I think a longer-term strategic question we need to ask ourselves is when the dust settles from all of this what kind of incentives can we actually put in place, as the United States and the international community, to do the sorts of things - to get institutions to do what we demand of them because I would argue for several years we did not do that.
Second thing, just really quickly on Camp David and the Taba accords, you know, I think it's a complex story. I think there's a lot of blame and failure and mistakes that could go around.
One thing from my perspective having lived in the Palestinian territories from '95 - 1995 till about 1998 working on democracy development programs, I - again, tying it back to how can we critically analyze what we can do as a U.S. government and the mistakes and the lessons learned. And one lesson learned I think at that early stage was that we had had a policy that focused almost exclusively on Arafat and his security structures. And there is a nuance here because on the one hand what I just said is we got to help build up those security structures but on the other hand we can't let that be the be all and end all.
And part of the problem structurally, I think, with the peace process in general and the Oslo process was that there was little opportunity for input. When I lived in Gaza I remember a billboard right downtown Gaza city, and it had Arafat and his face right next to the Dome of the Rock. And in Arabic it said, my dreams won't be completed without you, Jerusalem. And in many ways we weren't encouraging Arafat and those who were leading the Palestine authority to include the broader Palestine population in the decisions, in each interim agreement which was passed, you know, by the democratically elected body of the Israeli side.
I think it makes the task a little bit more difficult but it actually makes the process a bit more sustainable - something I think Jon had mentioned in one of his comments -where we should have had a strategy that, A, would have made the job more difficult in the short run but could have made the process a little bit more easier so that Arafat couldn't say, well, my population is not prepared. I think part of the reason why the population wasn't prepared was because Arafat didn't do that and also we didn't encourage him to expand that.
MR. FREEMAN: Jon.
MR. ALTERMAN: Just very quickly, it seems as Brian -
MR. FREEMAN: Speak up.
MR. ALTERMAN: Just very quickly, it seems to me first - we observed Israel has never responded to this kind of provocation in this way. I mean, there have been soldiers kidnapped; there's never been this kind of massive military action. I think it may have something to do with not only a relatively new Israeli government, but also one that's led by people without a long security resume. Ehud Olmert was not a security guy; the defense minister was a labor organizer. So I think there is a sort of a pre-orientation toward demonstrating toughness against the first provocation to show that Israelis haven't turned soft.
Where this, I think, leaves the Israelis strategically perplexed is because the central organizing principal - the Kadima Party - is unilateral withdraw brings peace, and now that Israel is fighting a two-front war from the very places it has unilaterally withdrawn from. I think part of the difficulty is going to be how do you replace that strategy with a different strategy at a time when Israel was fighting a war but doesn't have a strategic idea in place of where it all show go, how the war should end.
I don't see - on the second point about Camp David and Taba, I don't see that the Palestinians broadly rejected the idea of coexistence with Israel. Fatah lost the election for a whole bunch of reasons, some of which have to do with incredibly poor organization, complete lack of party discipline, the fact that they had become an utter kleptocracy that didn't stand for anything, plus Mahmoud Abbas wasn't able to get anything through the - I mean, a whole series of reasons why they lost.
It's not clear to me that people have - had signed on to a Hamas agenda, but now that we're in the situation we're in I'm not sure exactly how we all dig out. It's very hard to have coexistence with people who say you can coexist until we decide to destroy you. And I think in fact that's - it's true a little bit on both sides but in fact Israel is more justified in its interpretation of Hamas' intransigence than Hamas is.
MR. FREEMAN: I'd like to make a couple of comments. One, I think the key point Jon has just made is that Kadima's political platform has just been totally discredited. One hand can't clap and one side can't declare peace. One side cannot define borders between two sides. And it's an illustration for anyone who is looking that Israelis and Palestinians need each other if either of them is to have a state with defined borders. At the moment neither has a state with defined borders.
The second point is that the legacy of this conflict, whatever it is, is that we now have a war of flying bombs. Some are dropped from aircraft and some are fired on rockets. And distance is not the issue that it once was. Buffer zones are not as valid and useful as they once were. The military situation has achieved a measure of asymmetrical equivalence, if there is such an idea, which is not easily going to be corrected.
I'll make a couple of comments also on the specific questions you raised. If I were a cynic, which of course I'm not, I would look at the evidence and say that Israel always finds a reason to declare that there's no one to talk to on the other side. And when the other side finally elects people who clearly have the authority to talk, if they could be persuaded to do it, then Israel is determined to ensure that that they and the government they have formed are destroyed.
Israeli policy has very clearly been aimed at crushing Hamas. Many argue that in fact the IDF intended to go into Gaza, though not at the time that it did. All that happened with the kidnapping of this unfortunate corporal was that the safety went off the already loaded rifle, it was fired it a little earlier than the Israeli government had intended.
The second point is with regard to cause and effect. As you know, there's plenty of provocation on both sides. Some of what's going on recalls the famous exhibit in the Paris zoo in the 1840s when they put a human being in a cage and there was a sign that said, "cet animal est méchant; quand on l'attaque, il se défend." This is a vicious animal, which if attacked will fight back. There is no question that both sides have given each other ample reason to do all sorts of atrocious things and that they are capable of doing atrocious things.
And a final point is there is an interesting prospect for escalation here based on what I think is a fundamental misunderstanding of relationships. The United States is the quartermaster for Israel. We pick up the tab and we provide the supplies. The same relationship exists between Syria and Iran and Hezbollah. They are the quartermasters; they pick up the tab. But just as Israel doesn't apparently feel obliged to consult with us before it does some of the things it does, there's no indication that Hezbollah feels obliged to consult with Syria and Iran.
So we have an interesting equation here. Assumptions in the Middle East are that the United States connived with Israel in what is happening. I don't think so. Assumptions in the United States and Israel are that Iran and Syria connived with Hezbollah in what is happening. I don't think so. So we have an interesting situation where once again our ideas of what is and what actually is may be somewhat at odds.
Milton.
MR. VIORST: Yeah, that's an interesting point you make about who is conniving with whom, except that if we open the door and say do what you like there is a certain amount of conniving perhaps on both sides.
And you're absolutely right that there's a reasonable amount of blame to go around on - in both quarters on this - in this particular war. But I think what really is different now is that this is - at least as far as I can remember - the first war in which the United States doesn't even make the claim that its objective is to stop fighting and end lives. We now have a government which says, you know, fight it out, folks. If that's what you want to do we will stand by and hold your coat. And not only we are - are we holding their coat but we're brushing it.
Let me just add one other small item - and I don't know what the validity of this one is - but in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon it was clearly understood that its strategic objective as, A, to destroy the military power of the PLO, which was easy enough to do, but, B, to set up a puppet government in Lebanon which for a brief moment seemed to have been achieved when Gemayel became the president. Well, that didn't work out.
Now the question is - and many Israelis are asking it - is whether they are trying this again. Is that what is going to satisfy the Israelis, is to set up another puppet and I repeat Christian government, because maybe I'm a little hooked on this but the fact is that that's what it was in 1982 and that looks as if what it may very well be now. And what we have is the United States behaving not just negatively but giving tacit encouragement to the Israelis.
So if we get back to the whole notion of Arab - the Arab - the view of Arab public opinion of the United States, it's not getting any better.
MR. FREEMAN: If you give someone a blank check you're accountable for what happens whether you're responsible for the decisions that person makes or not, and that seems to me to be the appropriate analogy.
It's very interesting; the one thing we have asked is Israel to do is to reduce the level of civilian causalities in Lebanon. So far those are running at 94 to 95 percent of the death toll; that is to say, something like 5 or 6 percent of those killed have some association with Hezbollah and the others are civilians who were in the way. So whatever the Israelis are doing, they're not doing very well at responding to our rather modest request. That is probably going to have its impact on public opinion.
Yes, sir.
Q: I'm Daniel Clay. I'm interning at Congressmen - (off mike) - office.
All of you guys touched on how the public opinion in the United States is down in the Middle East. I was wondering if it's down because of what we did or is it down just because of our place as a superpower. (Off mike) - British basically up chopping up the middle East and the various countries - (off mike) - that was started by the conflicts between the - (off mike) - one of you guys touched on that - in the beginning it was touched on - (off mike).
MR. FREEMAN: Jon, start.
MR. ALTERMAN: I think that the way to frame this - an Arab friend said, these governments aren't accountable to us, the Arab world; they're accountable to you. I mean, people simply on a very broad basis say the U.S. is responsible for the nature of governance in the Arab world. It's responsible for the conflicts, the internal conflicts; it's responsible for repression; it is responsible for extremism because they see us as having relationships with everybody in power. They see us as, I think Brian was mentioning, as being supremely competent so all of our outcomes and intended outcomes, and therefore we're the people who are responsible for the mess in which they live.
And I think on a, I mean - Brian can I think both talk more specifically and give you more evocative quotations from people he has spoken to, but from going back and forth to the Middle East for 20 years, I think that's it in a nut shell that this stuff is all our fault.
MR. FREEMAN: Let Milton -
MR. VIORST: Well, I think there is a disposition - I totally agree with Jon that here is a disposition to attribute powers to us which we don't have. And one of the things that we learned after we became the superpower is that the Arabs have a rather remarkable ability to deal with us. It's certainly what they're proving in Iraq. And once again this is something that I think we have to cite that we had never taken into account the prospect of the capacities of the Arabs over the course of history to wage guerilla war or terrorism if you like, if you want to put its worse face upon it.
But the fact is that it's no secret that the Arabs have not very good - have not been very good in holding themselves accountable for much of their own horrors, and Jon is absolutely right in implying as much. And, yes, it's indeed true.
I think that what we have done make matters infinitely worse but in a large measure there has been an inability of the Arab world to assert its responsibilities. This is what I talked about earlier in my prepared remarks, that after World War II, when the Arabs were liberated from British and French control, we - they pleaded with the United States to give them some time to develop some institutions and we insisted upon their playing a role in the Cold War, which they also weren't very good at. But the institutions never came about and they haven't come about to this day, and the Arabs know it just as well as we do.
MR. FREEMAN: Brian.
MR. KATULIS: I think if you look at the research done over the last two or three years, some of the things that Shibley has done and other organizations, and some of the research that I've done, the top-of-mind impression is negative about the U.S., and it's largely focused on policies. It's on our support for Israel; it's on Iraq, and then there's also, you know, quite ugly anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about domination of the media and a desire to control the world.
But I, you know - going back to something I said earlier, I think there really is - and something that Jon and Milton have said - this sense that we are trying to control events. We saw this in research that I had mentioned we did in Iraq. In June of 2003, I was in Mosul; I was observing a focus group that our researchers, Iraqis, were doing.
And just that morning Saddam Hussein had an audiotape. You remember this was in a period when Saddam was on the run and doing some, you know - doing the war of ideas over the Arab media on audiotape. And we had a group of Sunni men, one of whom said that this is just another American game, this tape from Saddam Hussein. The CIA is trying to make the Iraqi people frightened. They're trying to make the - blackmail the Iraqi people and to make them fear.
And I think a lot of those attitudes are still out there, that we still have a lot of control and power over events. I would qualify that, as I did in my opening remarks, because I think the more that people have access to greater sources of information through the media, as Jon was talking about, the more skeptical they become when they see incompetence. And I think this is maybe an-ahead-of-the-curve-kind-of thing, but a broader - it's stunning to people. And I think they sort things out in the Arab world, the dissidence - how can they be so powerful and then be so incompetent - often by coming up with some quite convoluted theories about this.
But I think more and more when you see more evidence of an American government that can't even take care of its own people when it's - when the country is hit by a hurricane - you saw this in the Arab media.
Now, let me qualify it one more, it's not all negative when you do this research. Often times in polls you have a dichotomous choice of favorable versus unfavorable, and that doesn't get into the complexity of what I think, you know - a depth of attitudes. Individuals can simultaneously hold diametrically opposed opinions and I think American - Arabs and the people in the Middle East not only hate - to a certain degree - America and some of its policies, they fear, admire, respect.
And when you do more open-ended research you see that there's still some positives. There's the sense of economic advancement and the desire for progress. You can see this anecdotally when you look at people lining up for visas at the embassy. So I think there is something still to work with in terms of when people in the Middle East look at educational opportunities. And I know CSIS and Jon put out a report about how can you actually, even in this very difficult environment, take some steps despite some of the strategic challenges to improve it, and I think there is a way that you can. It's not all bleak and I don't think we should come away from this session that we can't do anything.
MR. FREEMAN: I think you've reintroduced a question which Shibley Telhami asked at the beginning, which is sort of what does it matter, and what is the - I would rephrase that. What is the scope of the issue we're talking about?
I think it's fair to say 20 years ago we would have been concerned primarily about Palestinian reaction, more recently and today we've been talking largely about Arab reaction. But I think in fact the reality has moved beyond that. We should be talking about Muslim reaction, that is, the fifth of the human race that is Muslim feels increasingly intimately connected to these issues and affronted.
And so therefore if you recall history - you know the last time the Israelis really tried to crush and isolate Palestinians we got the Munich Olympics incident and the Achille Lauro and things like that. And the last time they invaded Lebanon we got Hezbollah, which was a product of the 1982 invasion.
If the reaction comes this time it's not going to come from a few million Palestinians or a few million neighbors of Israel; it's going to come I think in a broader context from hundreds of millions of people. So we're talking about events that have a vastly larger leverage potentially on the world then we have been accustomed to considering in the context of the Middle East. And the explosion, if there is one, can be much larger. The world can be transformed in far more disadvantageous ways by the mishandling of this situation then we often seem to recognize.
Mustafa, are you - tell us again who you are.
Q: Thank you. I'm Mustafa - (off mike).
Your institution building - I saw some people - (off mike) - from National Democratic Institute in Palestine few years ago and Iraq also. And it reminds me. I'm from India. (Off mike) - British colonial - (off mike) - there are many people in institution building - (off mike) - England - (off mike) - free elections - (off mike) - 1937 and 1946, that if only we could be familiar with the blessings of British civilization we'll be fine. And it is those people, democratically elected, who wage the war of independence.
Now, in the Middle East, is that issue of - (off mike) - democracy new people want - (off mike) - George Bush, although issue is the American presence and bases and all that - (off mike). How are you going to do that?
And one last thing, you see the war leaders deciding about what they should do - all formal heads of colonel people, not even any Indian or anybody there. Do you think this state structure that is built up the second and first war - people don't like that - Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine - what are you going to accomplish with institution building when this systemic problem is there?
MR. KATULIS: Well, I think it's a great question. And I think, first of all, when you compare -
MR. FREEMAN: By the way, I congratulate you on out-bladdering two of our panelists. (Laughter.)
MR. KATULIS: When you look at British colonialism I think one can make a case that it was a hell of a lot more effective then whatever attempt at American colonialism we've seen. President Bush in 1999 ran on a campaign that he wasn't going to do nation building and he's fulfilled that campaign promise. He has not done it; he's not done it in Iraq or Afghanistan or other places.
What I was saying is what I think we need to do is work not - the U.S. should impose this - we should work with the international community to help people do for themselves. I think a law helps them - those who help themselves in a very real sense. And what we don't have right now from the leadership - you look at the leadership G-8's statement, particularly, on Lebanon.
And I think there's a formula. There's a formula about what needs to be done to actually achieve some sort of settlement and calm down the crisis, but you don't have leadership nor do you have policies. We have got a president of the United States who basically says Kofi Annan should tell the Syrians to cut the "S" out. And then they don't actually develop an effective policy to help build these institutions.
What I'm saying in terms of institution building is there are a local talent and people that can build for themselves but you need incentives to help strengthen the state structures. And again I think we should be careful because we don't - we need stability and we need to help societies build these structures themselves. We can't do for them, which is part of my critique of Iraq, and we're trying to do too much for others. What we need to do is create incentives otherwise you foster moral hazard and this sense of colonialism that feeds into, I think, the second part of your question.
And I think there's a better way of doing it then what we've done before, but it's not on the agenda. We've got a lot of rhetoric and talking points about advancing freedom and democracy, which I happen to think connect with where a lot of people in the Middle East want to go, but there's a disconnect in terms of what they see in reality on the ground. And what we need to do is revisit that, say what can we do to actually help people do for themselves.
And I think it requires international support. It shouldn't be a paternalistic attitude where the U.S. says we're going to do this for you, we're going to train you and you're going to be good civil servants. No, I think there's a basic impulse there for stability in order in good governance even before you get to democracy.
MR. FREEMAN: In defense of the president, Leon Hadar has pointed out that in Texan "Shi'ite" - and the word that he mentioned to Tony Blair sound the same -- so undoubtedly he was telling the Syrians to stop the Shi'ite. (Laughter.)
And since several people have raised the issue of civilizational conflict, I think probably Gandhi spoke for many in the world when, as you recall, he first arrived in London. He was asked what he thought about Western civilization, and he replied that he thought it would be a good idea. He also quite relevantly remarked that an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leads pretty quickly to a situation where nobody has either eyes or teeth. This is a fair description of the philosophy and level of mayhem now in place in the Middle East.
Young lady on the aisle.
Q: My name is - (off mike) - Institute - (off mike) - for the Yemen embassy.
I was really interested in - (off mike) - and I just had a - (off mike) - comment. A few days the Senate was having a hearing on a similar issue on Islam -
MR. FREEMAN: Can you hear her? Could you turn sideways and speak up -
Q: Oh, I'm sorry.
MR. FREEMAN: Because you're saying interesting things.
Q: Okay. A couple of days ago I was in the Senate and I was attending a hearing on a similar issue of Islam and the West and somehow the discussion seemed to totally shift into anti-terrorism and, you know, what you can do, and the polices about terrorism. And it started with basic worldviews. And the WHO (?) institute conducted a massive survey in nine Middle Eastern countries talking about the views of the Muslims towards U.S. and also the view of U.S. towards Islam in the world. And the conclusion was - seems to be very scary for the policymakers. And they seem not to, I mean, they haven't - they didn't understand why, you know, the Muslims hate them and that there is maybe an increasing sentiment of anti-Americanism.
And at that moment - (off mike) - and there's always this push now to find top-down solutions, quick ones, for anti-terrorism - (off mike) - are concerned about. So they are affected by the polls but they want quick solutions. And I'm thinking this only leads them to find policies - (off mike) - Arab governments that actually makes the Arab governments more oppressive to their people, and again increasing the anti-Americanism sentiments. You know, all of which backfires and we're in a vicious circle.
So what would you - I'm just thinking again - (off mike) - same as your questions what are your practical inclinations. I know this is long and you're going to think of what the long-term view is and slow process but can you tell me how it's - (off mike) - implementing which recommendation and give - (off mike) - solution on anti-American -
MR. ALTERMAN: If I could just make an opening observation. I'm sure Brian has a lot of very good ideas he hasn't yet shared; he's keeping them in his pocket until there's a Democratic administration when he'll unleash them on the world. You know, governments are really good at dealing with other governments. They've been doing it for a long time, there's a way to do it; we sort of understand - we have diplomatic notes, we have demarches - you wrote a book called, "The Art of Diplomacy," didn't you? I mean -
MR. FREEMAN: Actually it was more cynical; it was "Arts of Power."
MR. ALTERMAN: Okay. But you also wrote the "Diplomat's Diplomacy?"
MR. FREEMAN: Yes, I did.
MR. ALTERMAN: Yes, okay. There we go. Governments are really good at dealing with governments. Governments are really bad at dealing with other governments' people. We don't have instruments to do it; we don't know how to do it. They don't know how to deal with us. I don't think that's going to change quickly so I don't think the answer for this problem is the U.S. government figures out the secret, the plan, the whatever, and suddenly we're going to be affective dealing with broad populations.
It seems to me that part of what we need to do is we need to think of other kinds of institutions that can affect other institutions in other places. We need to think about the trends and we need to understand where the trends are going. I think a lot of this is going to be reactive. But the idea that somehow the U.S. government is going to be affective at dealing with another population when the fact is that other governments have been generally incredibly ineffective at inspiring our population to go one way or the other, I think it is to bet on the wrong horse.
We're going to have a lot more success with educators and academics and exchanges and those kinds of things over a broad period of time on a very micro level affecting attitudes than we're going to have with a government program, a strategy. And least of all we're going to figure out how to package this and then all the problems are going to go away.
MR. KATULIS: If I could just say, I think you're comment is tremendously insightful and I think it raises a lot of difficult questions for policymakers, especially on the Hill who are hit with 30 or 40 different issues in one day and can barely focus and they want a quick fix and a solution.
I have a theory that democracies often make their biggest strategic mistakes in response to a threat from terrorism of non-state actors. They actually end up undertaking policies in part to respond to their population's fear and in part, in a very real way, that ultimately undermine the strategic struggle. And I think coming up five years on the anniversary of 9/11 I think you have a lot of reflection and thought and hopefully some shift on it. I think it's a really hard struggle.
I think strategically part what we do at The Center for American Progress is try to help people think differently about security, reframe the nature of security, not solely think it - look at challenges in Iraq or in other places as a problem that requires military solutions, that we have a full range of power, diplomatic, political, economic power.
And you mentioned Yemen, I actually went to Yemen and wrote a chapter based on some research in Yemen and interviewed several ministers in the government and leaders, and it was focused on better governance in Yemen and what the international community is doing.
And I heard from the minister of justice in Yemen saying we're confused about the American policy in Yemen. On the one hand you have one hand saying to reform your structures, respect human right, political rights, civil liberties and you'll get all this money from the Millennium Challenge Account, but on the other hand you have intelligence agencies come and say, well, if you arrest these three- or four-dozen people and detain them without charge then you're really going to be helping us out.
And I don't know if you could ever - you'll always have ambiguity in any government, particularly a large superpower like the United States, but if there's a way to actually get a little bit more policy coherence where a lot of the objectives that we state that we want to achieve - I think we need to figure out a way to have more coherent policies. |
