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Sun Mar 5 19:45:27 PST 2006

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WHY IT WILL TAKE SO LONG TO WIN
Feb 23rd 2006  

A speech by Donald Rumsfeld shows that the administration still doesn't
get it

IN A century's time historians may well ponder why it took America so
long to win the war on terror, especially given that the world's
foremost democracy was battling against opponents who would rather have
dragged society back to the Dark Ages. If so, they may well find part
of the answer in a speech Donald Rumsfeld gave last week on the role of
the media at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

In one way, the speech marked a step forward for the defence secretary,
because it concentrated on the need to win "hearts and minds". Until
recently he plainly regarded such a focus on "soft power" as, well,
soft--part of "Old Europe's" appeasement of terrorism. No matter that
his generals, allies and counter-insurgency manuals told him that it
was impossible to defeat fanaticism without changing public opinion;
the master of military transformation would "drain the swamp" in Iraq
(and the wider Muslim world) through superior firepower, high-tech
intelligence and incarceration. When people--even trenchant supporters
of America, like this newspaper--harped on about such details as due
process, the Geneva Conventions or the importance of explaining his
policies personally to critics, it was proof of our weak-mindedness.

 Now something--was it, one wonders, Abu Ghraib? Or Guantanamo? Or the
torture memos? Or the fact that China now lectures America on human
rights? Or the tragic decline in sympathy for America around the
world?--seems to have prompted a meagre mental adjustment on Mr
Rumsfeld's part. His recent Quadrennial Defence Review confessed that
"victory in the long war depends on strategic communication" and even
issued a plea for "considerably improved language and cultural
awareness". His speech in New York was an attempt to flesh out this
strategy. Yet it ended up illustrating how completely the defence
secretary still fails to "get it".

Mr Rumsfeld's thesis was that al-Qaeda and other extremist groups had
managed to poison the Muslim public's view of the West by somehow
"out-communicating" America. A group of fanatics, whose leaders live in
caves and dare not use cellular phones, has apparently been much better
at mastering the modern internet age than the most sophisticated
government in the world. A good part of his speech was focused on how
with slicker PR America could win the propaganda war: there would be
more media training for military personnel, 24-hour media operation
centres, and so on.

In narrow terms, these prescriptions make sense. More controversial
were Mr Rumsfeld's swipes at the media. He grumbled that the mockery of
journalists had mucked up his crass scheme to pay for articles to be
placed in Iraqi newspapers; that they jeopardised security (in a
television interview, he claimed that al-Qaeda people had been tipped
off by the disclosure that their phone calls could be listened to); and
above all that his critics did not play fair, giving more space to
America's transgressions (like Abu Ghraib) than to those of its enemies
(such as Saddam Hussein's mass graves). 

Some journalism is indeed indefensible: witness the disgustingly
anti-American and especially anti-Semitic fare in many Arabic
television stations and newspapers. And Mr Rumsfeld has every right to
point out that the western press makes mistakes--though some of them
are at his bidding. He correctly attacked American TV networks for not
showing pictures of Saddam's abuses. But they were also wrong to hide
some pictures of American abuses at Abu Ghraib--which have now emerged
on Australian television, sparking off fresh problems in the Muslim
world.

The most unnerving thing about Mr Rumsfeld's remarks is that he still
seems to think that winning hearts and minds is just a question of
better presentation. But no amount of spin will make locking people up
indefinitely without trial at Guantanamo Bay look compatible with
American principles of justice. Mr Rumsfeld retorts that 15 detainees
who had been released went back to the battlefield to try to kill
Americans. A sad statistic, but a lot more than 15 hearts and minds are
turned against America every day Guantanamo stays open. And exactly the
same argument goes for the Bush administration's insane attempts to
reserve the right to torture people.

 These arguments have gone well past points of principle; they are to
do with the hard pragmatic task of grinding out a victory against a
relentless enemy. In its great struggle against Soviet communism--a far
more potent foe than Islamist extremism--America stood firmly on the
side of human rights and freedom. Unless it stands credibly on that
side again, winning this fight will take far longer than it should do.

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