repost from the old blog
To be fair, I haven’t watched much Al Jazeera Arabic since leaving Jordan a few months ago. Still, I don’t think I’m wrong in questioning the apparent disappearance of American officials from Arabic news channels. President Obama has been widely praised for his outreach to the Arab world (al Arabiya interview, Cairo speech, etc) – but how substantive has it really been?
Since losing face over the Settlement debacle last Fall, the Obama administration has done surprisingly little in terms of damage control….anywhere! When Israeli PM Netanyahu refused to accept the American request for a Settlement freeze – a temporary freeze, at that – nobody in the American government said a word. A few weeks later, Hillary came out and labeled the Israeli slowdown in construction as an “unprecedented” move. Not surprisingly, the Arab world went nuts. Obama was suddenly “exposed”, in many people’s eyes, as yet another American president who could not engage with Israel.
Where was the administration? The decision to suddenly, immediately back down from a significantly weaker political player – ally or not – was…surprising. But why didn’t Obama say something about it to the Arab world? Where is the revamped public diplomacy and international awareness that we’ve heard so much about? Quite frankly, I would have expected the administration to send out a little team of Arabic speakers to calm Arab fears and spin the situation as positively as possible. Silence is in many ways worse than even the most awkward attempts at public outreach.
I hate to say it, but I think George W. Bush did a better job of ensuring consistent, noticeable engagement with mainstream Arabic media. Was it good? No, for the most part it involved a solitary guy trying to defend indefensible Bush policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine, and on Terrorism. But at least Bush had that one voice on mainstream Arab media outlets.
That voice, as you may remember, was that of Alberto Fernandez. He was the Director of the Office of Press and Public Diplomacy in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. Fernandez speaks good Arabic, and while I disagreed with most of what he was saying during his time on the air, I thought he did an admirable job of actually trying to engage with Arabic-speaking audiences. I don’t think anyone was surprised when he slipped up and added some of his own opinions to the State Department line, calling American policy in Iraq “arrogant and stupid”:
Alberto Fernandez Calls US Iraq policy stupid and arrogant
Fernandez’s Wikipedia page says that he moved to a position in Sudan about a year later, but I seem to remember him disappearing from Arabic TV almost immediately after he let those comments slip.
I’d love my country to actually create better policies in the Middle East – better for us AND better for the people we’re engaging with. But, until the day comes where we stop supporting dictators, pushing wars, and ignoring domestic political development….I think the administration has a responsibility to explain itself to the people of the Middle East. We’re already seen in a less-than-positive light, but if we continue to avoid speaking directly to the Arab public, our country ends up looking worse and worse. Bush was seen as an evangelical idiot – but at least he was trying to explain his twisted version of reality. It may be wrong, but there’s some level of genuineness in that sort of action (I’m not saying Bush meant well). To make harmful policies, then ignore the inevitable public outcry…seems a little evil, no? When Bush didn’t say anything during the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon in 2006, and when both Bush and Obama stayed silent during Gaza 08/09 – it infuriated the region’s people to no end.
So back to my point – the US-Israeli Settlement Row *Round 2* has been the center of much attention over the past week. But, again, I don’t see American officials appearing on Arabic-language channels. Why not? Maybe the State Department still doesn’t have any Arabic speakers (hard to imagine), or maybe it thinks it’s too hard to control what their PR people are saying in Arabic. Either way, Obama is going to have to address this more actively from now on – if he doesn’t, he risks alienating the Arab public completely.
If I’m completely off-base on this, please let me know. As I said, I haven’t watched Arabic news regularly in a few months, maybe I’m missing Obama’s great PR takeover…
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