Winning hearts and minds: the Bush administration has launched a war of words in addition to its military strikes in an attempt to sway the people of the Middle East to the side of the United States

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 12, 2001 | by Jennifer G. Hickey

President George W. Bush has chosen a number of forums in which to enunciate U.S. objectives of the war on terrorism. Whether it was in front of a joint session of Congress, at a formal White House press conference or at one of many daily briefings, he has concentrated on securing support for his war policy and urging patience as well as resolve.

The shameful attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, witnessed by every American and by millions overseas, made garnering support for a firm response easier than it might otherwise have been. The United States is at war. Whether it is fought by the military through psychological operations (psyops) or by the State Department's public-diplomacy posts, the war of words already is an important part of the broader conflict.

In the days immediately following the first terrorist attacks the Army deployed its 4th Special Operations Command from Fort Bragg, N.C., to begin dropping informational leaflets and to develop radio/TV programming for the region. Also deployed was the 193rd Special Operations Wing of the Air National Guard, with its EC-130 Commando Solo aircraft, which earlier played an active psyops role for military engagements in Haiti, Panama and Bosnia.

As in Afghanistan today the communications in Bosnia were all but completely down. Psyops supported by Commando Solo aircraft were instrumental not only in delivering radio signals but in jamming what few Serbian transmissions there were or simply replacing them with other programming. In areas of eastern Bosnia out of transmission range, informational leaflets that included quotations from Plato to Thomas Jefferson were dropped.

During the Persian Gulf War, leaflets were dropped instructing Iraqi soldiers in the proper way to surrender, which many promptly did.

As effective as psychological operations were in the gulf war and in Bosnia, a report by the Defense Science Board at the U.S. Department of Defense has suggested that the Special Operations Command is too dependent on outdated technology and that the delivery systems of the Command Solo program should be abandoned in favor of delivering the psyops messages from unmanned aircraft.

Analysts with whom Insight spoke said atrophy and a heavily bureaucratic State Department that has failed to focus beyond the most recent engagement have hampered the public-diplomacy mission. "Public diplomacy has always had a very low priority in the minds of senior policymakers in the United States, but suddenly we are confronted with a situation which demands an effective and sophisticated program. ... I think the administration has done a very good job of trying to create a short-term, crisis-related public-diplomacy initiative," says Harold C. Pachios, a public-affairs officer in both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

Winning the military war and losing the war of words, or failing effectively to rebut misconceptions about the United States and its policies, can have damaging long-term effects. Iraq provides a case in point. A 1998 report issued by the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy determined that while coalition forces won the first battle -- the gulf war itself -- Saddam Hussein was victorious in the long run. After blocking U.N. inspectors from determining the state of Iraq's weapons capabilities, Saddam fought back. The report says Saddam -- beaten in 1991 -- had by 1998 "embarked on a concerted campaign to divert world media attention from his weapons to images of sick and hungry Iraqi children."

How successful was the campaign? Three years later, in an interview with Qatar-based al-Jazeera television, U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice actually had to explain the reasons for continuing sanctions on Iraq, at last challenging the Iraqi propaganda that Saddam's regime, not U.S. sanctions, were responsible for the continuing distress of Iraq's people. So why was Rice appearing on al-Jazeera? Pachios, who also is chairman of the U.S. Commission on Public Diplomacy, says "Al-Jazeera has enormous influence primarily because it is not state broadcasting and is therefore seen as being somewhat independent."

Independence does not mean it does not have a point of view. Despite its contention that the attacks on New York City and the Pentagon were provoked by U.S. policy and that violence is only a terrorist act when there is "no cause," the network is viewed by large numbers throughout the Middle East, where satellite dishes have become common. A number of administration officials, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, have given interviews to al-Jazeera as a part of U.S. public diplomacy.

"As a long-term solution to the profound problems of cultural misunderstanding, there will be no substitute for public diplomacy. It must be a key component of our long-term effort to eradicate terrorism," said Charlotte Beers, undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs at the State Department, in recent testimony before the House International Relations Committee. The department has established an around-the-clock task force dedicated to the effort, including close monitoring of international media reaction to ensure a prompt response from administration officials when needed.