Undercutting the Strategy

For a few years after September 11, the fissures and faulty assumptions in America's global strategy were papered over and held in check. Islamic partners were willing to cooperate to a point given the benefits involved. This gave Americans the impression of progress. But cooperation was fragile and thin, based more on an expectation of material gain than shared priorities and perspectives. And the United States was able to teeter along with a flawed strategy because because opposition from the element of the American public most likely to oppose the partnerships in the Islamic world--the political right--was held in check by Republican control of the White House. As long as it was George W. Bush and his administration arguing that extremists were not representative of Islam--something that President Bush stated often--the right muted its anger and hostility. Criticism would only strengthen Bush's critics. But with a Democratic president, the gloves came off. Politicians and pundits on the right found that public anger and hostility toward Islam was a useful tool to mobilize their constituency and attack a president whom a significant portion of Americans believed to be a secret Muslim. Just as Iraq was President Bush's vulnerability, Islam is President Obama's.

Before the 1970s, the vast majority of Americans thought or knew little about Islam. Most probably did not have an opinion one way or the other. But two things changed that. One was the Iranian revolution and its vociferous hatred of the United States. Seeing Iranian clerics hissing that the United States was "the Great Satan" while hypnotized crowds screamed in assent was an eye opener for Americans. Second was the adoption of terrorism by the Palestinian movement and Hezbollah. For many Americans, including a number of fundamentalist Christians, opposition to Islam because a component of the support for Israel which, they believed, the Bible required.

These things sparked a distrust, apprehension, and outright fear of Islam which, of course, grew immensely after September 11. In the anger of that time, hostility began to move from the political fringe toward the mainstream, and to grow in power. In recent years this has taken a number of forms. One end of the spectrum is inhabited primarily by people driven by the psychological need to hate something, whether propagandistic bloggers, talk radio hosts who stoke fear and anger to boost ratings and income, or small-time fundamentalist ministers who believe they are implementing divine writ. These people are simply hard-wired to hate. With the demise of the Soviet Union, they had no bete noire until what they saw as dangerous and aggressive Islam emerged to replace godless communism.

The other end of the spectrum was at least more sophisticated in its thinking. Probably the best known example was the "clash of civilizations" argument of the imminent Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington. Huntington contended that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the global security system would be dominated by conflict between Islam and the Christian West rather than between competing ideologies both originating within the West (communism versus democratic capitalism). Huntington argued that the conflict between Islam and the Christian West was not a transitory phenomenon or the result of a fixable misunderstanding, but flowed "from the nature of the two religions and the civilizations based on them." With the end of the Cold War and, importantly, the resurgence of Islam, it developed into an "intercivilizational quasi war." America leaders, Huntington wrote, "allege that the Muslims involved in the quasi war are a small minority whose use of violence is rejected by the great majority of moderate Muslims. This may be true, but evidence to support it is lacking." His own position was clear: "The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power." While Huntington's position was attacked virulently within academia, it demonstrated that hostility toward Islam was not limited to America's political fringe. Just as anti-communism had its hate-fueled John Birch wing and its intellectual advocates from Paul Nitze to Ronald Reagan and William Buckley, hostility toward Islam has a populist component and an intellectual one.

Admittedly, Americans remain divided on their attitude toward Islam. Polling data shows that 49% of Americans now have a negative view of Islam--the highest number on record. Of course, Americans themselves would say that means that a majority does not. But ultimately what matters for the U.S. global strategy is whether the publics and elites in Islamic countries believe that Americans are hostile toward Islam, not polling percentages. Given the psychological dynamics of the situation, all it takes is periodic outbursts of anti-Islamic sentiment, particularly those with support from American elite figures, to sustain the impression of hostility by Muslims abroad. Call it the Abu Gharib syndrome--one negative event can counteract dozens of positive ones or majority support. This is unfortunate, but it is the reality of cross-cultural communication.

But despite the perception of growing American hostility toward Islam, U.S. strategy persists in assuming that there is no basic incompatibility between Islam and Western civilization, only misunderstanding. Policymakers have not come to grips with the dissonance between domestic hostility toward Islam (whether real or perceived) and a global strategy based on winning support and building partnerships in the Islamic world. Now with extensive and opposition to the planned Cordoba House Islamic center in New York City, demonstrations against mosques across the country, and Koran burning ceremonies by fundamentalist ministers, passions are boiling. Muslims abroad are well aware of this. In September 2010, for instance, Afghans demonstrated to protest the highly publicized planned burning of Korans by the Gainesville, Florida-based Dove World Outreach Center. Even General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, warned that this threatened American service members. It all undercuts the idea that America's war is only with terrorists and not all Muslims. They feed the narrative of al Qaeda and its sympathizers that America and the West are at war with Islam itself. Condemnation of the Cordoba House by well known figures, including a number of prominent political leaders with electoral ambitions, mosque attacks, and Koran burning make a major contribution to the strategic communication of al Qaeda and other extremists.


 

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