Center for a New American Security

A meditation on Archie, public diplomat.

Okay, it was a really good speech. I finally listened to it -- I had read it on paper yesterday morning -- and he nailed it. I mean, he botched a lot of the Arabic words (hijab, al-Azhar, etc.), but it was good. I suspect that I agree with the Washington Post that all anyone will remember will be the Israel stuff, and that's too bad. And I even agree with the very end of Krauthammer's unintentionally hilarious and epic whine about settlements today (in Israel, only far-right MPs struck the same tone as Krauthammer yesterday) when he says this might cause some leaders in the Arabic-speaking world to just sit on their hands and expect Obama to deliver Israeli concessions with no movement on their sides. (Because this was exactly the vibe I got during Abu Mazen's press conference with Obama last week.)

But still, it was a really good speech. I watched it using this cool interactive feature provided by the New York Times, so if you have not seen the speech yet, click here.

...that Obama's big speech in Cairo today is a bigger deal in the Western world than it is in the Arabic-speaking and Islamic worlds? The speech is only the #2 story on al-Jazeera right now, behind the clash between Palestinian security forces and Hamas in Qalqilya.

Marc Lynch, meanwhile, has as good an immediate analysis as you are likely to read anywhere.

Do you think "CIA Agent Drugs, Rapes Arab Women" is a story that will get much play in the Arabic-speakng world and further harm our image in the Middle East? Nah, me neither. We can probably let this one slide as I don't see any way in which this will be reported on Arabic-language satellite networks or in the newspapers tomorrow.

Marc Lynch -- in his wheelhouse -- has the full run-down on Obama's appearance on al-Arabiyya. He also makes a great point at the end of his post, which is that this should be the final nail in al-Hurra's coffin. After 500 million dollars and years of investment, we have to consider America's Arabic-language television channel to be a dismal failure when the incoming president chooses another outlet to make his first address to the Arabic-speaking world. Enough already. Pull the plug.

From Matt...

The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948: A Discourse to Shape America’s Discourse (Symposium). Washington, D.C. – at the Reserve Officer’s Association at the intersection of First Street and Constitution Avenue, NE. The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 was passed as the U.S. was beginning a "war of ideology... a war unto death," as America's Ambassador to Russia described it at the time. But, beginning in the 1970's, instead of promoting international engagement through information, cultural and educational exchanges, the law was distorted into a barrier of engagement. From its propaganda and counter-propaganda intentions, it transformed into an anti-propaganda law for reasons that had little to nothing to do with concerns over domestic influence and far removed from the original intent of the law. Keynotes will be given by Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy James K. Glassman and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Support to Public Diplomacy Michael Doran. There will be four 90 minute panels – past, present, future, and Congress – that will emphasize Q&A, discourse, and debate and not presentations or monologues. Registration is free, open to the public, and required to attend. The event will be on the record with a transcript available after the event. A public report based on the proceedings will be produced. Registration and other information can be found at http://mountainrunner.us/symposium.

Globe-trotting citizen of the world (and friend of this blogger) Shadi Hamid has an op-ed in the Washington Post on what Barack Obama's speech and rhetoric might mean to Arabs and Muslims. According to one of the classy chain emails Abu Muqawama regularly receives from his father, Barack Obama is a Muslim. (In response to receiving said email, Abu Muqawama dismissed his father from his campaign staff in the race to be the next president of AUB.)

A few friends of this blog have sent in stuff that, well, Abu Muqawama thinks you should read. First off, everyone's favorite counterin-sur-gen-say playa hayta, LTC Gian Gentile, has an article in the World Politics Review worrying about America's conventional capabilities. (One thing Gian and Abu Muqawama agree on 100% is that you should all read Avi Kober's new article on Israeli failings in the 2006 war. Now.)

Second, the MountainRunner, who is about 10 years older than Abu Muqawama yet drinks pitchers of Yuengling like Abu Muqawama once could back in the day on the mean streets of West Philly, has a response to another friend of the blog, Marc Lynch (Abu Aardvark), who challenged some folks to suggest what the next president should do in the public diplomacy game. Challenge accepted. You guys all know the MountainRunner's blog, right? Good.

All we know is that if the next president doesn't repeal the Smith-Mundt Act, you'll find MountainRunner naked on the roof of the Pentagon with a rifle.

Update: More from MountainRunner.

You know who's not very good at this whole public diplomacy thing? President Bush. We here at Abu Muqawama stay out of the whole presidential politics thing, but that's okay because quite frankly all three of the remaining candidates for president -- sorry, Huck -- would be pretty good communicating U.S. interests and decision-making to the global public. Honestly, McCain, Clinton, and Obama would all be pretty good public diplomats. Abu Muqawama has been watching the president's interview with the BBC for which he has gotten little but negative press over here in London. ("Bush cites London attacks to defend waterboarding" reads the lead headline in today's Guardian. "Bush defends US record on Darfur" says the BBC.)

Now, a lot of what the president says speaks pretty well to American viewers. He uses a baseball analogy at one point, so as long as people were watching the interview in Japan (or some other place U.S. Marines brought baseball via war) it didn't fly over everyone's head. And he condescendingly mentions "the elites" a lot, which probably goes over well among those who watch the O'Reilly Factor on Fox and who think this Andover/Yale/Harvard graduate and son of a former president is a regular Joe, but for the rest of the world, Bush -- the leader of the world's most powerful country -- is the elite. Does he not get that? You can't speak to the BBC like you would speak to Brit Hume.

Another thing, geez, this guy doesn't have a very firm grasp on the English language, does he? Abu Muqawama is from East Tennessee and he knows that whole thing about people who live in glass houses, etc., but the president talks about suiciders at one point. Folks, you need to have grown up in East Tennessee to understand this guy's language sometimes.

The interview wasn't all bad, though. The president spoke with great intelligence at points. (Seriously.) But the thing that made Abu Muqawama most angry was that the questions weren't even that hard and yet the president missed his opportunity in every instance to put a shine on or explain U.S. policy, opting instead to answer in ways every viewer knows are at odds with the facts. At one point the interviewer rightly extends congratulations to the president for U.S. AIDS initiatives in Africa but asks if the U.S. should have capitalized on the program to, you know, earn a little credit with the African people. (Yes!) Instead the president gave this aw shucks faux-humble answer in which he claimed it was just about doing the right thing and wasn't about taking the credit. (Deep breath.) Yes it is, Mr. President! Yes it is! The primary purpose of those AIDS initiatives are to ease human suffering, but a secondary purpose should be to ensure that every African knows the U.S. has their interests in mind while others -- the EU, China -- could care less. There's nothing wrong with taking a little credit on the global stage when you're getting hammered elsewhere.

Such as on the torture issue.

Never mind the fact that McCain, Clinton, and Obama have all broken sharply with the president on this issue. Never mind the fact that newspaper editorials in the U.S. and abroad have all condemned American use of "waterboarding" to combat terrorism. The president stuck to his guns on this, and when he was asked by the interviewer whether or not this had hurt America's moral standing in the world -- a question to which everyone knows the answer is YES -- Bush claimed against all reason that it had not. Mr. President, even if you think waterboarding is a good idea, it doesn't look good at all when you make statements on international television that are completely at odds with reality. You know the perception that the U.S. tortures has hurt America's standing in the world. You know this, even if you think torture is appropriate in certain cases.

Folks, we can't keep bashing the U.S. military and State Department for doing such a crummy job with public diplomacy as long as the guy in the White House does such a bad job himself. Honestly, the average, earnest 23-year old platoon leader is a better public diplomat when put in front of the camera than the 43rd president of the United States. Sad but true.

Hey, everybody, please direct your attention over to the Small Wars Journal blog where Matt Armstrong, a friend of Abu Muqawama who runs the excellent MountainRunner blog, has a piece on public diplomacy. Matt is really one of the bright young minds on public diplomacy, having studied and thought about it perhaps more than anyone else. (He's about to be the second person in history to have a master's degree in public diplomacy.) Abu Muqawama didn't even know what the Smith-Mundt Act was before reading Matt's post, and now he's ready to take up pitch forks and torches and lead a march on Washington, demanding it be amended. Matt writes:

Smith-Mundt has shaped the content and methods of communications from State and Defense through institutionalized firewalls created along artificial lines, fostering a bureaucratic culture of discrimination that hampers America’s ability to participate in the modern struggle over ideas and managing perceptions.

Read it all here.

Update: And while we're at it, we should mention MountainRunner has taken a page out of the Abu Muqawama Playbook and come up with the first in a series of educational readings on public diplomacy. Good on him.