They had a lot to say, but it all came down to this consensus: The United States had forfeited its right to report on abuses committed by others by committing its own, failing to correct them, and then holding no one in authority accountable. They said they would have expected this behavior in their own countries, but not in mine.
The keywords in their e-mails to me included Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, imprisonment without trial, ghost prisoners, kidnappings, renditions, unilateralism, bribing journalists, and Bush & Company and their whole Iraq adventure.
One of them wrote, “What kind of democracy is George Bush trying to spread anyway?”
Lest Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh or Dick Cheney are immediately tempted to attack the people who wrote to me, they need to know that these men and women were as disbelieving and horrified by 9/11 as was most of the rest of the world. Many of them had attended American universities. They put their freedom on the line every day by fighting autocratic rule. They are people who once thought of us as the world’s last best hope for progress and equity. And, yes, they are all Muslims.
In short, these are precisely the people our current public diplomacy maven, Karen Hughes, is supposed to be reaching through her efforts to “win hearts and minds”.
But perhaps the job description of this culturally-challenged Friend of Bush ought to ask, “How Do We Win Back the Hearts and Minds of Friends We Have Lost?”
Through exchange programs? By trying to bond with Muslim women by telling them that she, too, is a Mom? By insisting they drive the cars they’d rather have their drivers drive? By denying or remaining silent on what her country has become and by slavishly justifying whatever her boss, the President, does in the name of the “Global War on Terror?”
One of the young women I wrote to summed it up this way:
“We’re used to the iron fist of government in Egypt. We expect it. We used to have someone we could count on to show our leaders how to lead by setting an example of good governance without the iron fist. It was America. Now that’s gone. Now, the only people who are motivated by what America is doing are the very people it’s trying to defeat – Muslim extremists.”
