Thanks, Mike et al. (Who is this "Al" guy?)Originally Posted by MikeF
I've been off the net for a couple of days, waiting fruitlessly in Kuwait for my milair to OEF. While aircraft get downed for maintenance and our pressure cooker of backed-up travelers grows, it's been difficult for us to get away from the terminal to get online.
I mentioned recently in this thread that A) I won't claim to have the education or certificates to discuss international relations proper, although my reference to "smart power" could certainly lead some to that conclusion; and B) that I also don't claim to be stirring up some sort of popular, coordinated uprising among our target population via a variation (that's alliteration) on smart power.
Rather, what I've hoped to express in this introduction to my "Applied" Smart Power is that it's very much a person-to-person matter rather than nation-to-nation; it can in fact lead to serendipitous improvements at a local level, which can spread into larger population/government influence; and that I'm probably going to have to incorporate anecdotal examples from my work in a little over 30 nations instead of diploma-based justification.
Briefly, to get back to Mike's quoted submission, it seems that we're in a theoretical debate about whether it's good to be nice to non-combatants in a conflict zone (it is) or whether words are more important than deeds under the same conditions (they aren't). In fact, what Joe Nye teaches and Tom endorsed is that the "attractive" aspect of soft power is not about hollow rhetoric at all, and absolutely is about practical action and its value in role modeling. I couldn't agree more that deeds, not words, are what counts. It's unfortunate that our dialogue or my expression would indicate otherwise.
So, how about an anecdote as promised? While I was at one of the three bases in Iraq from March 2008 to March 2009, I had the good fortune to become friends with an Arabic interpreter who is originally from Egypt. We'll call him "Kami".
Kami and I worked together on this particular base for several months, and enjoyed having respectful discussions about Islam, to which he is devoted adherent. In fact, he's so "Muslim" that with his big shaggy beard, serene countenance, and "devotee dot" (the darkened spot on the forehead from a lifetime of pressing that skin against the floor in prayer), you might easily mistake him for a brother of Ayman al Zawahiri, bin Laden's partner in hate.
This background material is key to my teaching about applied smart power. By this point you have a picture of my "Islamist" friend in your mind. This picture is inseparably connected to your individual biases, pro or con, about what an Islamist who looks like al Zawahiri is all about. That assumption probably doesn't match what Kami, the three-dimensional human being, is actually all about, as will be evident from the following Paul Harveyesque "rest of the story":
While Kami and I were talking one day, I mentioned one of the initiatives that our host command had undertaken. A young boy in the local community had been diagnosed with an abdominal tumor, and this tumor had grown out of control and threatened to kill him. Our forces arranged to bring the boy and his father inside the base for follow-on transport to a surgical hospital and complete recovery, all courtesy Uncle Sam.
Kami stared at me with his eyes welling up. "Ah," he said. "God bless America!"
! ! !
I won't comment much more on the story, so each reader can interpret its implications for himself. The one thing I will say, though, is that I can think of a huge number of potentially good outcomes when a respected, devout Muslim scholar takes this new attitude to a madrassa filled with impressionable young men, or back to Egypt where he may share tea with a cousin in the original Muslim Brotherhood.
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