America’s image problem

Posted: Sun, 03 Jun 2007

Shorter Fareed Zakaria: Everybody calm down—you’re scaring the bad guys! And that means you, too, Obama!

The presidential campaign could have provided the opportunity for a national discussion of the new world we live in. So far, on the Republican side, it has turned into an exercise in chest-thumping. Whipping up hysteria requires magnifying the foe. …

Though Democrats sound more sensible on many of these issues, the party remains consumed by the fear that it will not come across as tough. Its presidential candidates vie with one another to prove that they are going to be just as macho and militant as the fiercest Republican.

Repeat after Zakaria:

There is no real terrorist threat. We’ll never be able to protect ourselves against terrorism. It’s our response to terrorism that’s the problem.

With no apparent communication, collaboration or further guidance from bin Laden, small outfits from Southeast Asia to North Africa to Europe now announce that they are part of Al Qaeda, and so inflate their own importance, bring global attention to their cause and—of course—get America to come racing out to fight them. …

We will never be able to prevent a small group of misfits from planning some terrible act of terror. No matter how far-seeing and competent our intelligence and law-enforcement officials, people will always be able to slip through the cracks in a large, open and diverse country. The real test of American leadership is not whether we can make 100 percent sure we prevent the attack, but rather how we respond to it.

If we are attacked, we must think and act very, very carefully before we retaliate:

Were there to be another attack, politicians would fulfill their pledges to strike back, against someone. A retaliatory strike would be appropriate and important—if you could hit the right targets. But what if the culprits were based in Hamburg or Madrid or Trenton? It is far more likely that a future attack will come from countries that are unknowingly and involuntarily sheltering terrorists. Are we going to bomb Britain and Spain because they housed terror cells?

[ed: Not to be too cold-blooded about it, but I suppose it will depend on the circumstances. Any candidate for president must contemplate the seemingly impossible—such as the notion that 19 young men might bring down the World Trade Center, part of the Pentagon, and a plane full of valiant Americans in a Pennsylvania field on a crystal-clear late-summer day in 2001.]

We should engage Iran—our natural ally:

Iran is a Shiite power and actually helped the United States topple the Qaeda-backed Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Besides, what’s the big deal about a nuclear-armed Iran?

There are many influential voices arguing for military attacks on Tehran. But let’s keep in mind that this is a poorly run, internally divided oil tyranny that is increasingly antagonizing the rest of the world. It is insecure enough to have arrested Iranian-American civilians and warned its own scholars never to talk to foreigners at conferences abroad. These are not the signs of a healthy system. [I’ll say! –ed.] Iran is a serious and complex problem, but it is not Hitler’s Germany. Its total GDP is less than one third of America’s defense budget. A nuclear-armed North Korea has not been able to change the dynamics of global politics. A nuclear-armed Iran—and we are still far from that point—will not bring about the end of the world as long as we keep it tightly contained.

We should put the failure of Iraq behind us and move on:

It would be far better for us to reduce our exposure to the current civil war, draw down our forces, let Iraq’s internal political forces play themselves out and restrict our troops to certain limited but core missions. We need to continue the battle against Qaeda-style extremists, maintain a presence to reassure and secure the Kurdish region, and continue to train and keep watch over the Iraqi Army. All this can be done with a substantially smaller force—about 50,000 troops, which is also a more sustainable level for the long haul.

The administration has—surprise—tried to play up fears of the consequences of a drawdown in Iraq (which is always described as a Vietnam-style withdrawal down to zero). It predicts that this will lead to chaos, violence and a victory for terrorists. When we listen to these forecasts, it is worth remembering that every administration prediction about Iraq has been wrong. Al Qaeda is a small presence in Iraq,

You natives are too goddamn restless! Stop talking trash about foreigners!They’re different from you and me. Some of them approve of suicide bombing. Deal with it. Consider yourselves lucky that there are relatively few of them.

The first comprehensive poll of U.S. Muslims, conducted last month by the Pew Research Center, found that more than 70 percent believed that if you worked hard in America, you would get ahead. That compares with 64 percent for the general U.S. population. Their responses to almost all questions were in the mainstream and strikingly different from Muslim populations elsewhere. Some 13 percent of U.S. Muslims believe that suicide bombings can be justified. Too high, for sure, but it compares with 35 percent for French Muslims, 57 percent for Jordanians and 69 percent for Nigerians.

This distinct American advantage—which testifies to our ability to assimilate new immigrants—is increasingly in jeopardy. If leaders begin insinuating that the entire Muslim population be viewed with suspicion, that will change the community’s relationship to the United States. Wiretapping America’s mosques and threatening to bomb Mecca are certainly a big step down this ugly road.

America is bad—do you hear him? B-A-D. It has been bad for decades. Its foreign policy has been a disaster. And yet out of this heap of ashes that Bush 43 has left in his wake, Zakaria is certain that if only American can move forward with—wait for it—confidence, why, then, maybe we can begin to rebuild our shattered image.

To recover its place in the world, America first needs to recover its confidence. For those who look at the future and see challenges, competition and threats, keep in mind that this new world has been forming over the last 20 years, and the United States has forged ahead amid all the turmoil. In 1980, the U.S. share of global GDP was 20 percent. Today it is 29 percent. We lead the world in technology and research. Our firms have found enormous success in new markets overseas. We continue to generate new products, new brands, new companies and new industries. …

Thanks for the reminder! Whatever would we do without worldly gentlemen like yourself, Mr. Zakaria, to tell us how to behave in front of the neighbors?