The Public Opinion War

The videotape made it clear that in the high-stakes public opinion war in the Arab world, bin Laden had a big head start. At home, the Bush administration PR offensive went well in the early days of the war. The President put Karen Hughes, his director of communications, in charge of "an ongoing process of educating the public," in her words, immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks. The administration quickly won overwhelming domestic support.

But making the case abroad was something else. The first flap arose when Voice of America, the taxpayer-supported foreign broadcast service, aired parts of an interview with the head of the Taliban, set off with same-length quotes from President Bush. "Equal Time for Hitler," screamed the headline on a William Safire column in The New York Times. VOA officials replied they were simply following their usual policy of presenting opposing viewpoints. Despite the controversy, VOA received $5 million in emergency appropriations after the attacks-a significant boost to its $131 million budget-to increase broadcasts in Central Asia. But the House, backed by the administration, also voted to create a new propagandistic service, Radio Free Afghanistan.

American officials also reached out to the television network Al-Jazeera, which is based in Qatar and reaches into 20 Arab countries with a CNN-style format that is typically anti-American. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Agency for International Development Administrator Andrew Natsios all appeared on the network to make the case for a U.S.-led war on terrorism. And Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Charlotte Beers, a veteran of the advertising world, launched a campaign to "brand" American values in the Muslim world.

But VIP interviews and advertising may not be enough to boost the image of the United States. "Public diplomacy toward the Muslim world has been very poor and it has to get better," says Warren Zimmerman, U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1989 to 1992. "But public diplomacy isn't going to solve the problem of our diplomacy"-that is, continued U.S. aid to unpopular rulers to win their support. U.S. embassy personnel "must be more aggressive in contacting groups beyond the ruling regimes," says Zimmerman. "Otherwise, we'll signal that we're doing nothing but supporting these dictatorships."