Image and reality (Al-Ahram)

[gottaB]

I couldn't decide whether to post this article in Media or Foreign Relations. It's about propaganda, soft power, American image at home and abroad, Abu Ghraib, and Bush doctrine.

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Analysts of propaganda will always tell you that, to be effective, image and reality must go hand in hand. The photographs of prisoner abuse from Abu Ghraib prison reveal another axiom: that when images reflect a perception of a reality you do not recognise or confront, you hand a propaganda victory to your opponents. OK, so Rumsfeld apologised for what he called "a few bad apples", but Bush scored yet another propaganda own-goal by ending his apology interview on Al-Hurrah with the words "good job", confirming it as a US state run propaganda mouthpiece to at least the small number of people who were watching it.

Why is it that what many people once regarded as the most sophisticated communications nation on earth keeps on proving itself to be its own worst enemy in the propaganda front of the "war" on terror? Again, most propaganda experts are agreed that the so-called "struggle for hearts and minds" is perhaps the most important battle-space in this conflict. Yet Voice of America broadcasts in English are being reduced and, despite the reinvigorated debate about public diplomacy and "soft power", the State Department's budget for global "strategic influence" activities is tiny compared to that of the Pentagon. But then again, Rumsfeld has claimed that he does not know what "soft power" means. He need only ask Joseph Nye, who coined the phrase, at the Harvard School of Government. It is the exercise of communication which makes you attractive to others, and thereby to make them want to be like you.

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The West stands accused of hypocrisy, arrogance, duplicity and racism. That is how it is perceived from the other side of the lens. For Western perception management to be effective, it needs to see itself through the eyes of others before it can begin to address dispelling misconceptions. The United States since 9/11 may perceive itself to be "at war" in a conflict where there is no "neutral ground" but in fact there is a great deal of neutral ground between extremism on both sides. Most analysts of propaganda are agreed that the hardest job of all is to persuade the already converted to think differently. But not to recognise or even accept that there may be millions of people who are neither for the terrorists nor anti-American merely creates a situation which drives people into the extremist camps and forces people to take sides.

This does not excuse what happened in Abu Ghraib. But it does help to explain it. The images tarnish the reputation of the American military which is having to fight a "war" on behalf of a doctrine that can never be sold to the unconverted, no matter how slick the marketing.

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Image and Reality....

[gottaB]

1. day people?