STATEMENT OF REP. GARY L. ACKERMAN

CHAIRMAN

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE MIDDLE EAST AND SOUTH ASIA

ARAB OPINION ON AMERICAN POLICIES VALUES AND PEOPLE

MAY 3, 2007

It’s clear to anyone who has bothered to read the polling data coming out of the Middle East, that the policies of the United States are overwhelmingly disliked.  The general view of the United States as immoral, licentious, rapacious and seeking to colonize the region has long been standard fair for Arab intellectuals, and as a result for the broader Arab public.  The war in Iraq, the perception of U.S. hypocrisy on the question of democratization, and long-standing U.S. support for regimes that are generally disliked by their people only serve to cement the views that Arab publics already hold.

There are age old caricatures of the of the United States that flow from the European socialist Left and its affiliation with Arab nationalism, but those ideas are false on their face and could be combated with effective public diplomacy.  Our real problem in the Arab and non-Arab Muslim world is not as the President has suggested, that people hate us because of our freedoms, it’s that they don’t trust us to work for and support theirs.  Arabs and the broader Muslim world have simply listened to our language for too long and then watched us as we repeatedly fail to deliver on the rhetoric.  It is fairness and justice that they are after and they don’t believe that they will receive it from us.

Since the September 11 attacks, there have been too many facile linkages between poverty and hopelessness and terrorism, when in point of fact the polling data suggest something much more alarming and something much more difficult to address:  the most radical individuals among Arab publics are also those with the most education, those with the most opportunity in their respective societies and those with some or a great deal of exposure to the West generally or the United States in particular. This data speaks to an understanding of Western ideology and subsequent betrayal and disillusion, not in their cases with hopelessness driven by poverty and despair.  It tells us that there are people who have been seduced by the promise of liberty and then crushed by the abandonment of those who they thought could and would deliver it.

Almost three years ago the 9/11 Commission Report was explicit about the significance of the foreign policy, and especially the diplomatic components of an effective national counter terrorism strategy. Sadly, the Bush administration and the previous Congress thought little of this advice. Public diplomacy was equated with campaign-style spin and flavor-of-the-month diplomatic initiatives designed to address American critics but not Arab or Muslim public opinion.

The Administration’s stillborn attempt to promote democracy in the Middle East has failed to strengthen our allies at the roots of their societies and has failed to create the political space necessary for legitimate democratic opposition to develop and grow. Instead, the rhetorical flourish of Secretary Rice at Cairo University was followed with silence, and then worse, acquiescence as regimes throughout the region went back to business as usual.

This is betrayal that will not be undone by a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq or a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  This is betrayal that will not be soothed by a political settlement in Lebanon.  It is deeper than a change in U.S. policy could reach, and more profound.  Arabs simply do not see us as we see ourselves, and if we continue to present ourselves to them, as we see us, without taking into account how they see us, then we will never come to the kind of understanding that both we and the Arab and broader Muslim world say that we want.

I look forward to hearing today’s witnesses and hope that from the numbers, a way forward may emerge.

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