State Department Outreach Results In "Multiple Collaborative Efforts" With Islamists (Plus: State To Revolutionize Arab And Muslim Relations By Giving More "Respect")
The State Department's efforts to reach out to the Muslim community have resulted in multiple collaborative efforts between the State Department and radical Islamist groups and individuals. Some of these groups and individuals have even been convicted, indicted, or designated unindicted co-conspirators in terrorism cases in the United States, many linked directly to the Muslim Brotherhood or share its fundamentalist ideology. Collaboration between the State Department and Islamists has occurred in a variety of ways including hosting and sponsoring Islamist speakers, meeting with Islamist advisors, attending Islamist events, and funding programs involving Islamist groups and individuals, particularly at U.S. embassies abroad.
Want to stump a State Department public diplomacy bureaucrat? Ask whether Al Hurra - State's Arab TV station and occasional anti-Semitic jihadist propaganda outlet - is supposed to be news, entertainment, or just cheap propaganda. Honestly. Don't even bother with the whole "you're an utter and abject failure because your viewing share is in low single digits." Just try to figure out what they think Al Hurra does.
They're in a touch position. You can't come out and say "well, in order to be convincing we have to speak the audience's language so that's why we broadcast Nasrallah's genocidal exhortations." It doesn't play well in front of Congress.
Aside from the whole "US tax dollars funding jihadist propaganda" thing, State's projects are also useless. The whole dejected "they'd love us if they only gave us a chance" nonsense is not just pathetic but demonstrably false. Saudis already understand the West's tolerance for gender and racial minorities - those are the first dozen exhibits in their "Western decadence" rants. But all those mid-level State Department kids coming out of State feeder schools like Fletcher and the Woodrow Wilson School need jobs. So diplomacy becomes the hammer and global crises become nails - "we should negotiate with Iran because this time it might work"; "we should bolster with the Palestinians because this time it might work"; "we should explain ourselves to the Arab world because then they'll stop hating us".
And of course bureacratic inertia doesn't just stop when it fails. Instead it gets ugly and vicious. When State's outreach backfires - as it inevitably does because outside of their fantasy world Iran is nuclearizing and the Palestinian public doesn't want peace - the choice becomes between blaming someone else or accepting that their oh-so-sophisticated understandings of the world, crafted in the interest of justifying a bloated bureaucracy, are wrong - well, it's Israel's fault. Or it's the anti-Iranian neocon warmonger's fault.
Or it's because we haven't been obsequious enough to the Arab world. Ergo State's new strategy for public diplomacy: revolutionize the US's relationship with the Arab and Muslim world by respecting their anti-Western biases more. Seriously.
References:
* Testimony To House Subcmte On Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade [Steve Emerson]
* State Department's Arab TV Station: Israel Conducting "Holocaust Against 1.5 million Palestinians" [MR]
* State Department Public Diplomacy Scores Again - Nasrallah Now Most Admired Leader In The Arab World [MR]
* "Good News and Bad in US Public Diplomacy" [Rami Khouri]
Previously:
* Karen Hughes - Public Diplomacy Chief, Utter Failure - Finally Resigns [Video]
* State Department Public Diplomacy Scores Again - Nasrallah Now Most Admired Leader In The Arab World
* US State Department: Lebanon Is Not Responsible for Hezbollah
