Is the image of the United States in "free fall"?

rocohen writes in today's New York Times:

"Karen Hughes talks fast. She talks a lot, zipping from point to point. She's a hybrid, one motor or another always running. She gives the impression of a woman racing against the tide.

The tide in question is anti-Americanism, perhaps the fastest-growing force in the world today. Hughes's job is to stem it, sap it, stop it. That's a big job. In fact, no bigger one exists for the United States.

Hughes, whose official title is under secretary of state for public diplomacy, and whose task Orwell would have characterized as chief propagandist, says she doesn't do spin, only facts.

"Now, of course I try to portray the facts in the best light for our country," she adds, "Because I believe we're a wonderful country and that we are doing good things across the world."

That's called spin. And the world isn't buying it. The image of the United States is in something close to a free fall.

There are lots of reasons, beginning with the fact that any elephant this big bestriding the world's stage is going to irk people, especially when George W. Bush is riding it. But I suspect a basic cause is that in the 65-year period of 1941-2006, the United States has been at war in some form or another for all but 14 years.

There was World War II and then, after a two-year break, the Cold War, which ran until 1989, and then, after an interlude of a dozen years, the war on terror. These were different sorts of wars, of course, and among them were Korea and Vietnam. But somewhere along the way, most acutely in the past few years, people got tired.

They got tired of America's insatiable need for an enemy; suspicious of the talk of freedom and democracy and morality in which every struggle was cast; forgetful of the liberty preserved by such might; alarmed at the American fear that appeared to fire American aggression; and disdainful of the distance between declarations and deeds.

In short they stopped buying the American narrative.

Hughes, as she made clear at a recent meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations, wants to revive that narrative. She envisions an America offering a "positive vision of hope." Of Osama bin Laden's followers, she says: "Theirs is message of destruction and death, ours a message of life and opportunity."

If only it were that simple.

Hughes has lots of good ideas. She's putting a couple of Arabic-speaking diplomats in Dubai whose task will be to get the American view out fast on Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya and other regional media.

She has assembled a rapid-response unit at the State Department, where she works. Its job is to monitor world media, notably the pan-Arab stations, and produce a one-page daily report, distributed throughout the government, setting out America's response to every major story. One voice makes a case better than many discordant ones.

She's encouraging American ambassadors, once seemingly judged on their ability to avoid on-the-record interviews, to speak out. They'll now be evaluated in part on their public diplomacy.

She's looking at delivering the American view to MP3 players or through text messages to cellphones. She's even got a plan to make America's airports "present a friendly and welcoming face."

The problem with all this is a commodity Hughes insists she treats with great respect: facts.

It's hard to seduce people at charming airports when they're getting fingerprinted. It's hard to sell "a message of life and opportunity" when kids are being killed every day in Iraq. It's hard to convey a message of openness when American embassies are being transformed into fortresses. It's hard to attract the world's best students when visas get held up.

Above all, it's hard to win what Hughes calls "the battle of ideas" with terrorism when the idea of America, its most powerful asset, has been sullied by Abu Ghraib and by the refusal to allow enemy prisoners at Guantánamo Bay access to counsel.

America's ideological struggle suffers further when balances essential to this country's well-being and image - between the executive and Congress, between security and liberty, between the Pentagon and the State Department - appear increasingly tilted in favor of a top-down, invasive, authoritarian-tinged form of government.

It's not just Americans who begin to wonder when it emerges that their telephone records are being pored over by Bush's spooks. It's a world that had looked to America the free.

That's the big picture. Until it changes - which will almost certainly take a new administration - Hughes will have her work cut out.

She's right to enlist the help of Muslim Americans. She's right to increase the budget for exchange programs to bring imams to the United States. She's right to try to "do for terror what was done to slavery" - that is, delegitimize it.

But first the United States must re- legitimize itself. This is essential because terrorism is based in hatred, but hatred swims in a sea of animosity. Turn the animosity around and you are winning.

That, however, will be hard while Donald Rumsfeld remains defense secretary. Hughes is trying to get her ideas across to this side of government.

She's leading an interagency group, including the Defense Department and intelligence agencies, that has "identified some key countries" and is asking "how we can identify the 75,100 most influential clerics and work over the next three years to make sure we invite them." It's also examining "how might the Defense Department work on its military-to-military exchanges."

That's interesting; even more interesting is the fact that "in one of our first digital video conferences, on the screen as it happened, we were able to get two agencies of our government to learn about what the other one was doing that they hadn't known before."

There's the Bush administration for you. Stuff happens when you've got entire government departments out there freelancing. Bad stuff even Hughes-in-overdrive will struggle to undo."

E-mail: [email protected]

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jim1eye @ May 17 2006, 12:18 PM) [snapback]256909[/snapback]</div>

I wish. If I could write for the NY Times I probably would not be posting in priuschat.

It is a great paper, though still just part of the mainstream corporate media. My favorite paper is the British paper, the Guardian at www.guardian.co.uk The coverage and writing is first rate.

The internet is really an amazing thing. I probably browse through 15 or 20 news sources a day and have access to Lexis-Nexus and many other databases.

 

There is no doubt the international image of the US has fallen precipitously since the neo cons came to power. Words like "freedom" and "democracy" are nothing but air if the US fails to respect freedom and democracy at home and abroad. The reason for this "freefall" is that people around the world have seen through the neoconservative hypocrisy.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ May 17 2006, 12:44 PM) [snapback]256929[/snapback]</div>

You are right, a lot of people still want to come here. But the country's "image" has suffered greatly, and not just because "they envy our freedom". Not only have we lost in prestige, but our economy is in very serious trouble. Witness the other "free fall" - the US dollar against the euro, yen and renminbi.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eyeguy13 @ May 17 2006, 01:28 PM) [snapback]256964[/snapback]</div>

My wife and I moved to the US from Canada in 1998. It was a different country - optimistic, confident, not paranoid. There was a surplus. There was an intelligent and rational self-made President intead of a c student legacy brat with a silver spoon in his mouth. The U.S. was respected around the world. There were lots of jobs.
It is still a great country at the level of ordinary people, as the British poster says. Can we get that back again?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eyeguy13 @ May 17 2006, 01:48 PM) [snapback]256986[/snapback]</div>

Me too. And I'll help you with immigration. (Don't worry, you don't have to speak French, but you will need to have a basic understanding of the rules of hockey, the metric system and a very high tolerance for stories about Quebec separation)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ May 17 2006, 02:21 PM) [snapback]257013[/snapback]</div>

Our so-called "prosperity" is a debt-financed illusion. See article:

Foreign investors are paying for the party while gaining financial leverage over the United States


"You might ask, "If we're currently spending more money on entitlements than we actually have in our federal government, who's actually paying for it?" The answer is foreign suckers. Did I say suckers? I mean foreign investors.

Right now, China owns an alarming percentage of U.S. treasury bills, and the governments of China, Japan and many other countries are supporting the United States' federal budget deficit by purchasing U.S. debt like a drunken sailor buying another round of shots. As of right now, they've purchased so much U.S. debt that they could collapse the U.S. economy overnight by simply selling all the debt they have accumulated. This is not at all an exaggeration.

But you might ask, "Why don't they do that? Why doesn't China sell U.S. debt and cause the collapse of the U.S. economy?" The answer is simple: Why would China want to mess with the great scam? China is selling all sorts of plastic goods to U.S. citizens who are spending more money to buy them. This results in a huge transfer of wealth to China, and China uses a portion of that wealth to purchase U.S. debt.

China gets both the profits of the products it sells, plus all the trade surpluses, and it gains political and economic power over the most dangerous superpower in the world, the United States of America. Obviously, if you're China and you'd like to increase the strength of your position for the present time, you continue to allow the U.S. to sink itself deeper and deeper into debt."

And of course, we all know that US consumers are in debt up to their eyeballs since there have been no real wage gains since Bush came in. The transfer of wealth to the top 5% is not enough to sustain consumer demand; only credit cards and home equity loans do that, and that is coming to an end.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ May 17 2006, 02:31 PM) [snapback]257025[/snapback]</div>

Taxes higher in Canada. Try paying over $8,000 in property taxes where I live plus federal plus state.
Health care? You can forget about a lot of things in Canada, like:
Medical bills (you will never get one)
Being denied coverage for a "pre-existing condition"
Having no health insurance because you lose your job (everyone is covered)

As for multiculturalism, Toronto is one of the most multicultural cities in the world and has a crime rate one tenth of the US
Why did I leave? Because there are 191 countries in the world and I can choose to live anywhere I want if I do so legally. It is called "freedom" - you have heard of it, right?

 

"without all the financial burdens of supporting a military"

And who, exactly is this military "protecting us" from? Not the soviet union. Not China. Not even from "terrorists". Is it not, in fact, simply a mechanism to transfer billions of dollars from ordinary working taxpayers into the hands of rich investors. Who needs it? Americans would be far better off without it.