Are both sides totally mucking up the psychological war on terrorism

Great Debates
1

Both sides seem to be mucking up the psychological aspect of this war.

The US is accused of being a self absorbed bully, a pawn of Israel and wanting to turn the mideast into a colonial gas station. we respond to this by ignoring world opinion and invading Israels major/main enemy which is a major source of oil and taking it over (not that I believe the war was about oil or Israel, but people who want to believe it now have circumstantial evidence to support their claim).

on the other side of the issue are people like Bin Ladin and Zawahiri who was probably once supported by the people of the mid east. I remember right before the war when polls were taken in the middle east showing Bin Ladin being one of the most respected world leaders by people in Palestine & Jordan. But Bin Ladin gave support to Al- Zawahiri who has decided to bomb weddings and civilians. Their targeting of civilians and total indifference to human suffering is turning public opinion. This could turn people against Bin Ladin as well if he supports Zawahiri further, which he probably will because he is probably indifferent to suffering in the name of holy war. As people realize this support will waver.

At the same time, humans being curious creatures, are probably going to side with or at least give thought to whatever is prohibited. If you prohibit marijuana people wnat it more. If you constantly tell people to hate America you run the risk of raising a generation that is willing to give america the benefit of the doubt. This seems to have happened in Iran with their propaganda backfiring. This also happened to a degree in India according to Fareed Zakaria.

http://www.fareedzakaria.com/articles/articles.html

Most Americans would probably be surprised to learn that India is, by all accounts, the most pro-American country in the world. The Pew Global Attitudes Survey, released in June 2005, asked people in 16 countries whether they had a favorable impression of the United States. A stunning 71 percent of Indians said yes. Only Americans had a more favorable view of America (83 percent). The numbers are somewhat lower in other surveys, but the basic finding remains true: Indians are extremely comfortable with, and well disposed toward, America.

This may be because for decades India’s government tried to force-feed anti-Americanism down people’s throats. (Politicians in the 1970s spoke so often of the “hidden hand” when explaining India’s miseries—by which they meant the CIA or American interference generally—that cartoonists took to drawing an actual hand that descended every now and then to cause havoc.) More likely it is because Indians understand America.

At the same time the US pays Iraqi news sources to plant pro-US stories.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060303/ts_nm/iraq_usa_newspapers_dc

Lowering trust for the US. There was also the incident of the US bombing a Pakistani town not too long ago.

On another note, US support when the tsunami hit and the Pakistani quake hit were major points for our morale war. Most likely because propaganda had nothing to do with it for many Americans. I donated money to both out of humanitarianism, not because I wanted or expected the people to stop supporting terrorism because of it. However this is a catch-22 as you can’t support humanitarian intervention that is altruistic for selfish reasons. So it seems that the one thing that works to combat terrorism can’t be done to combat terorrism, because when it is it stops working. Helping people out of altruism and because you want something are two totally different things.

It seems like both sides are screwing up royally at the propaganda war. The US is fulfilling all its negative stereotypes and the terrorists are bombing civilians while the mid east media tells the citizens what to think and who to hate which works in the short term but runs the risk of doing the opposite long term.

2

I don’t agree with your analysis here. My impression of Indians is that while they love America and Americans, they thoroughly despise US foreign policy (particularly what they see as a hypocritical double standard). I’d be interested to know how the poll question was worded and if it was asked in English before drawing any conclusions from it.

Secondly, aside from usual political rhetoric that is used by any politician trying to pander to votes, remember that during the Cold War, America and India were often at loggerheads over India’s non-aligned movement and US support of Pakistan. Relations took a particular beating when India intervened in Pakistan’s civil war, which didn’t go over well in Washington. That was 1971, and it seems logical to me that the political rhetoric you refer to stemmed from this war. It’s not as if disputes with the US government were some complete bogey-man manufactured out of thin air.

But there’s an interesting question raised here, which is why are US-India relations thawing when much of the world has moved towards a more antagonistic position towards the US? Here’s what I think are the answers:

  1. India has been plagued by radicalized Islamic terrorism for awhile now, and its only natural that 2 countries facing the same threat would align themselves in some fashion.

  2. The US has taken a much more balanced foreign policy approach to India-Pakistan issues, removing this as a tool for political rhetoric. This is probably due in large part to the end of the Cold War.

  3. Indians are sick of the Nehru quasi-socialist legacy and are looking to make money. This naturally means American investment.

  4. The US has never actually invaded India or toppled its government, so there’s no bitter legacy to overcome in normalizing relations.

So, what we have here is a natural progression of Indians wanting to change their country, combined with new attitudes from the US, combined with massive external changes in the global political and economic scene. But, all the US has done here actively is well, to change its approach to India. Most of the other stuff (such as Indians looking to liberalize the economy) are the result of internal political movements in India or the result of global forces.

Now, if the US had kept a hostile stance towards India, then yeah, things could turn out very differently. But I think that the US has adopted a pragmatic realism towards India that is an individualized approach towards the conditions that exist there.

Which is where I think the US is failing on the terrorism front. It has been lumping disparate groups together as some generic Islamic boogeyman and using the same hammer response to all of the issues. But what we’re dealing with are a number of groups, each with their own agendas, some of whom find common cause on occasion. And we have to find an individualized response to deal with each of them. So, yeah, I think the US has succeeded w/ regards to India and is royally messing up w/ regards to the Islamic world.

Which brings me to my next point. Even if Osama loses his popularity, that really doesn’t solve the psychological war issue, because as I said earlier, I feel we are dealing with a number of linked, but distinct movements. If Palestinians decide they don’t like Osama, but they like Hamas, what do we do? I mean, it’s nice if Osama mucks up his end, but it doesn’t help us all that much.