[iwar] [fc:Bush.to.Create.Formal.Office.To.Shape.U.S..Image.Abroad]

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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Bush.to.Create.Formal.Office.To.Shape.U.S..Image.Abroad]
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Bush to Create Formal Office To Shape U.S. Image Abroad

<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18822-2002Jul29.html">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18822-2002Jul29.html>

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 30, 2002; Page A01

The Bush White House has decided to transform what was a temporary effort to
rebut Taliban disinformation about the Afghan war into a permanent, fully
staffed "Office of Global Communications" to coordinate the administration's
foreign policy message and supervise America's image abroad, according to
senior officials.

The office, due to be up and running by fall, will allow the White House to
exert more control over what has become one of the hottest areas of
government and private-sector initiatives since Sept. 11. Known as "public
diplomacy," it attempts to address the question President Bush posed in his
speech to Congress the week after the terrorist attacks: "Why do they hate
us?"

At the time, Bush was referring to the terrorists who attacked the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon. "They hate our freedoms," he has repeatedly
said since then. But as demonstrations, boycotts and other expressions of
anti-Americanism have spread across the Islamic world and beyond, the
question has taken on broader meaning -- and the need for a broader
response.

A senior administration official said the goal of the office was not to
supplant the State Department, which has primary responsibility for "telling
America's story" overseas, or replace other agencies with international
outreach functions. The office, he said, would add "thematic and strategic
value," along with presidential clout, to their efforts.

"If you were to ask people representing the government who travel, who serve
overseas -- even leading Americans -- 'What does America want to say to
people in the world? What are the top three points? What is the answer?'
that has to come from the top," the official said.

Headed by a yet-to-be-named "counselor to the president," the office would
expand many of the responsibilities of the White House Coalition Information
Center, established shortly after the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan
began last fall.

High-ranking officials from here and Britain made scores of Arab media
appearances in what the White House considers one of the most successful
efforts to assure the Arab world that the United States has not launched a
global anti-Muslim campaign. Even as it was booking guests on Qatar-based
al-Jazeera, the White House Coalition Information Center was laying out a
uniform, daily message to communicate across high- and low-tech media
outlets. It is that level of management, undertaken quickly and effectively
across the administration, that the White House thinks it will be able to
continue.

The new office is the brainchild of senior Bush adviser Karen P. Hughes,
architect of the administration's efforts to ensure a uniform message on
domestic policy. Although Hughes returned to live in Texas early this month,
officials said she will remain closely involved in the new operation.

Charlotte Beers, the advertising agency executive Bush appointed last year
to the State Department's top public diplomacy job, said one of the
September lessons still being learned "is that we can and should do more to
educate, and influence the attitudes of, foreign audiences toward our
country."

Graham E. Fuller, a former vice chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence
Council and a longtime Near East analyst for the agency, said that during
years of living and traveling in the Middle East, "I have never felt such an
extraordinary gap between the two worlds. . . . Clearly, in a region where
we desperately need friends and supporters, their number is dwindling, and
we are increasingly on the defensive."

"How has this state of affairs come about?" House International Relations
Committee Chairman Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) said in a speech last month
to the Council on Foreign Relations. "How is it that the country that
invented Hollywood and Madison Avenue has allowed such a destructive and
parodied image of itself to become the intellectual coin of the realm
overseas?"

Hyde shares a widespread conviction that a major part of the problem has
been poor salesmanship. In this view, the best way to fight a negative image
is to increase the flow of positive information, using every tool at the
United States' command, including the most modern information technology,
student exchanges and placement of overseas American libraries.

Some critics question whether expanding and improving delivery will help if
there is no change in the message. "If fundamental policies are seen to be
flawed, a prettied-up package will not make a difference," Fuller told a
recent meeting of the bipartisan U.S. Advisory Commission on Public
Diplomacy.

The problem is particularly acute in the Middle East, he said, a part of the
world where U.S. support for Israel and for non-democratic regimes are seen
as fundamental tenets of wrongheaded American policy. "Immense interest in
American culture" remains, along with approval of the U.S. political system
and domestic freedoms, Fuller said. But he said "there is a sense of double
standards" among Arab youth who say: " 'We want your political values. It is
you we perceive as not applying them in any consistent way.' "

Through polling, focus groups and fact-finding missions, the administration
has been exploring how to enhance the image of the United States.

Among the first ventures is Radio Sawa, a 24-hour U.S. government radio
station that began broadcasting to the Arab world last spring. A far cry
from the wordy, editorializing Voice of America that has been the
centerpiece of U.S. government broadcasting since World War II, Radio Sawa
is modeled after Top-100 FM stations in this country.

Sawa, which means "together" in Arabic, uses market research to select a
frequently updated playlist of American and Arab pop music that will appeal
to young Arab listeners. Although there are plans to add more substantive
programming, its current editorial content is a brief news bulletin twice an
hour.

In a promotional prototype of future programming, Mohammed, an Arab youth,
calls a radio talk show to say: "I want to know why the United States is
fighting a war against Islam." In response, the station plays an excerpt
from one of many Bush speeches on the peaceful nature of Islam and the ways
in which terrorists have perverted it.

The State Department has begun producing what Beers calls
"mini-documentaries on Muslim life in America" to air on satellite stations
in the Middle East. Having dismantled, for budgetary and security reasons,
most of the once-ubiquitous American Cultural Centers and libraries around
the world, the State Department plans to expand the "American Room" concept
begun in Russia in the early 1990s. Corners of Americana established with
local staff in existing local libraries or other cultural sites, the "rooms"
are considered less appealing as terrorist targets.

With these efforts in their infancy, it is unclear how effective they will
be. "We're reinventing the wheel," Walter R. Roberts, a veteran of high
posts in public diplomacy efforts in previous administrations and a
consultant to the advisory commission, said of the American Rooms at a
recent commission meeting.

One Arab American who has closely followed public diplomacy developments
said, "We need to ally ourselves with the right people. Our embassies need
to go out and mingle. They hang out with the elites and don't engage those
who resent us" but who have not turned to violence. "It's like a campaign,"
said this observer. "You've got to go after the swing voters."

Beers says this is precisely the attitude she is trying to instill. She has
pledged that all U.S. diplomats, no matter what their rank, will receive
more extensive training in the American "message" of democracy, personal
freedom and free markets and learn how to spread it through local societies.
Recruitment programs now emphasize public affairs, long considered near the
bottom of the diplomatic career ladder, as an increasingly important
specialty. Early this year, Beers brought U.S. embassy public affairs
officers from around the world to Washington for a morale-boosting
conference.

Congress has also moved into the public diplomacy arena. The House last week
passed, with no opposition, a Hyde-sponsored bill that eventually would add
hundreds of millions of dollars to the public diplomacy budget, expand the
responsibilities of Beers's office, establish civilian exchange programs in
the Muslim world and fund round-the-clock satellite television to the Middle
East. Similar efforts are underway in the Senate.

Hollywood has signed on to help, although early flag-waving has evolved in
most cases into nervousness about being drawn into a less clear-cut
propaganda effort.

Almost every public policy think tank, including the American Enterprise
Institute and the Brookings Institution, has held symposiums and offered
advice. Today, the Council on Foreign Relations will weigh in with the
release of "Strategy for Reform," the result of a month-long public
diplomacy study by a private-sector task force.

But while there is a torrent of new attention, concern over how the United
States is perceived abroad and what the government should do to influence
foreign attitudes is a well-worn subject in Washington.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first to identify a target audience
overseas with his Office of War Information, which created the Voice of
America and established American Information Centers in liberated areas of
Europe.

During the Cold War, President Harry S. Truman launched a "Campaign of
Truth" that he said was "as important as armed strength or economic aid" in
the battle against communism. Its most memorable creation was the U.S.
International Information Administration, which established overseas
libraries and foreign exchange programs. Under Dwight D. Eisenhower, it
became the United States Information Agency.

Eisenhower rejected placing the agency under presidential control, and
direct White House involvement was not revived until Ronald Reagan took
office. In a classified, January 1983 National Security Decision Directive,
Reagan placed responsibility for "overall planning, direction, coordination
and monitoring of implementation of public diplomacy activities" under the
National Security Council.

Relative global peace and a search for cuts in the federal bureaucracy made
USIA a natural target for the Clinton administration, and there were few
complaints when it was eliminated as a separate agency in 1999. By September
2001, the White House viewed public diplomacy as a back-burner enterprise
for a superpower with unilateral interests and responsibilities.

Christopher Ross, a State Department specialist in Middle Eastern affairs
who returned to government last year as "special coordinator" in Beers's
office, said, "In the 10 years between the Cold War and September 11, we had
forgotten about the outside world." The harsh anti-American rhetoric and
images that had begun to overtake initial responses of international
sympathy and support, he said, "showed us what people think of us, and we
were shocked."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

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