Well, as much as it pains me to say this, a U.S. invasion of Iraq is looking mighty inevitable at the moment. I’m an optimist, but I haven’t totally gone off my rocker, and at this point it sure seems there will be full-scale war by the end of the week.
So if you were in charge of minimizing anti-American backlash around the world, especially incidences of terrorism and other violence against American civilians living/traveling abroad, how would you go about it? I’m especially interested in the PR side of things rather than the military/security side of things. After all, a rather large proportion of Americans do not support the idea of war, so why should they face violence because of something their government does over which they have little to no control?
(Myself, I can’t figure out why Powell et. al. haven’t emphasized the human rights side of things in greater and more graphic detail than they have; it might provide greater legitimacy, not that it seems the current administration cares about legitimacy except to the extent that it gets them votes on the U.N. Security Council.)
Given that Bush has already declared that he’ll launch a military campaign this week these comments might be worthless now.
They haven’t emphasized the human rights aspect because it’s a non-issue. The Bush administration isn’t entering Iraq because of human rights concerns. If anything, focusing on human rights would merely be used as a cover for their true intent: regime change. If it weren’t because of the oil reserves and the strategic location of Iraq in terms of location and potential geo-political influence the US would not be concerned with Saddam.
On one hand, you seem to state that the Bush administration has not emphasized ‘the human rights aspect’ to the war.
From last nights address by GW:
Sound human rights-ish to me. And GW has been saying such things for weeks, if not months.
On the other hand, you say that the human rights concerns are merely a ruse for regime change. Perhaps you are missing the casual relationship here? Human rights in Iraq are non-existanst due to the current regime over there. Take them out, and voila! Human rights improve considerably, overnight.
Any sort of PR campaign would most likely be a lost cause. Presumably literate and intelligent people here in America seem to willfully disregard the good that GW has/is/will do. Like hell we would be able to convince some zany radical islamist.
But there are all sorts of military/paramilitary options.
And Bush apparently does not even want to try to influence any non-zany Arab or Muslim (or European) who has reservations about his unilateral decision to go to war, regardless.
I hope he has not condemned my kids to lives under the shadow of terror from the former moderates that he is about to recruit to the zany militant cause.
I agree with you Brutus, GWB and all his pals have been pushing the human rights aspects for a while now. I think maybe he thinks, we owe it to the Iraqi people since we got their hopes up in '91 just to stop before we rolled into Baghdad.
Willy_ph, on location and of course, oil. Look, we already have more influence on oil then any three countries combined. Not because we produce so much, per se, but because we use so much of it. If it was about the oil, we would be running the Iraqi fields right now because of Gulf War I, or we could just overrun Kuwait and take their oil. You think the Saudi military could stop us if we wanted their real estate and oil reserves? Face it: It’s about getting rid of Sadaam and his ilk, their WMDs and their oppression of the Iraqi people.
That’s an interesting assertion. What’s your historical basis for assuming this will be the case? Iran in 1953? No… bloodbath. Guatemala in 1954? Bloodbath again! How about Haiti in 1959? Hmm… those Tonton Macoutes didn’t do much for human rights. Well, Congo in 1965. Oh damn, looks like another mass civilian slaughter. Chile in 1973? No… epic bloodbath. I’m going to stop now before we get to the 80’s and our track record gets really bad.
This is my fear also. If it is ok for Bush to adopt a black-and-white worldview, allow no middle ground and turn it into US policy, what is to stop others from doing the same? I don’t expect to lose this war, but I certainly expect to have a lot more enemies at the end of it than we had going in. Our next few Presidents better be foreign policy geniuses and firmly committed to re-establishing ties with the global community. Finding common ground and re-establishing good relations with the people Bush is pushing into the enemy camp with his “for us or against us” attitude. The US, as powerful as it is, simply can not be a rogue nation, nor can it expect to always get its way.
My point is this. If this military action was purely about human rights it; a) would have been argued for a long time ago; and b) wouldn’t occur because the US isn’t concerned with human rights abuses. There are many historical instances where the US has preferred to ignore human rights abuses than to take military action to stop them.
I’d be more concerned about a PR campaign with our “allies.” I’d go with a big propaganda campaign with Iraqi refugees telling of their horror stories and their support of a war. The public responds to visuals, not numbers or letters. I would make deals with CNN to stop covering “Freedom Fries” and wine dumping stories. I would get an anti-french policy frenchman and an anti-american policy american to debate on CNN. Boy these are dumb ideas.
To address the OP, the simplest way to avoid terrorism is to post very large and very clear signs saying “NO WAR WITH IRAQ” in Arabic. But these signs where ever you worry an attack may occur.
The second part of this solution is a bit underhanded, but to protect civilian targets, what would a terrorist aim for a group of military personal, or a group of protesters with “NO WAR WITH IRAQ” signs (again, in Arabic)? But you still want protection, so you dress your military up like protesters, he he he. I sure hope terrorists don’t read this message board.
(Note: My inspiration for this was accusations that Yasser Arafat would say “peace” in the English part of his speech, and then “kill the infidels” in the Arabic portion. The other half of my inspiration came from watching US travelers sew Canadian flags on their backpacks)