Do you read the reports of the DOD, Donald?

The Defense Science Board was established as an arm of the Defense Department in 1956. Its role is to investigate how science may help in developing radical new weapons system. I suspect that they interpret their role broadly as in October they published a report entitled “Strategic Communications”. Here are some excerpts from that report (http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/2004-09-Strategic_Communication.pdf).

“the United States is engaged in a generational and global struggle about ideas, not a war between the West and Islam.”

A new approach to strategic communication “will build on in-depth knowledge of other cultures and factors that motivate human behavior. …..it avoids slogans, quick fixes and mind sets of winners and losers…..it begins with listening….it makes informed decisions”

“Policies will not succeed unless they are communicated to global and domestic audiences in ways that are credible and allow them to make informed, independent judgments.”

“messages should seek to reduce, not increase, perceptions of arrogance, optimism and double standards.”

“There is consensus …that U.S. public diplomacy is in crisis. Missing are strong leadership, strategic direction, adequate coordination, sufficient resources and a culture of measurement and evaluation. America’s image problem, many suggest, is linked to perceptions of the United States as arrogant, hypocritical and self-indulgent.”

“The focus is more on capturing and killing terrorists than attitudinal, political and economic forces that are the underlying source of threats and opportunities in national security.”

“Islam’s crisis must be understood as a contest of ideas and engaged accordingly.”

“Americans have inserted themselves into this intra-Islamic struggle in way that have made us and enemy of most Muslims.”

“There is no yearning-to-be-liberated-by-the-U.S. groundswell among Muslim societies.”

“The U.S. urgently needs to think in terms of promoting actual positive change.”

“the perception of intimate U.S. support of tyrannies in the Muslim World is perhaps the critical vulnerability in American strategy. It strongly undercuts our message, while strongly promoting that of the enemy.”

“American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies.”

“Muslims do not “hate our freedom”, but, rather, they hate our policies.”

“Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy.”

“in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering.”

“American actions and the flow of events have elevated the authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims.”

“Thus the critical problem in American public diplomacy…..is a fundamental problem of credibility. Simply out, there is none.”

“Arguably the first step toward mitigating and eventually reversing this situation is to better understand the values and worldviews of the target audience itself.”

“Muslims see American policies as inimical to their values, American rhetoric about freedom and democracy as hypocritical and American actions as deeply threatening.”