The State Department’s ‘subtle bigotry of low expectations’

After more than a year into what is being called World War IV, the United States has yet to wage an effective campaign to win the hearts and minds – or at least the healthy respect – of the Arab and Muslim worlds.

In a compelling Washington Post essay packed with disturbing facts and figures, Middle East expert Robert Satloff writes an effective indictment against the State Department for what is increasingly seen as a timid and counterproductive public diplomacy campaign.

“The administration’s ‘public diplomacy’ — outreach to people in foreign countries over the heads of foreign governments — focuses disproportionately on ‘soft’ topics, such as values, while shying away from advocating the foreign policies many Muslims don’t like and may, in fact, not know enough about,” writes Satloff.

“Fixing our public diplomacy requires a wholesale change of approach. Washington’s public-diplomacy designers need to operate on the basis that America is, in fact, at war. Advertising our diversity may be a worthy goal in times of peace, but we don’t have that luxury today. At a time when the world looks to us for clarity of purpose, activist naysayers should not be chosen to speak abroad under the State Department banner.”

“Rather than shy away from our policies,” Satloff argues, “we should defend them. Serving up a diet of fluff is not just wrong, it’s condescending, a foreign policy version of what President Bush, in another context, called the ‘subtle bigotry of low expectations.'”