Reparing an image

[Wagner]

What I think I think:

I see all these notes flying around on CNN and other 'news' (used loosely) agencies that say "America - how can it repair its image with Muslims?". Hmm, well how about the fact that a recent poll said 1 in 5 (yes only 20%) of Americans had a favorable view of Muslim countries.

Kind of hard to have an outward 'happy face' when internally you hate the person. Maybe we should stop caring about what other groups/countries think about us until we get our house in order. If 80% of citizens don't particularly like a group, you need to fix that first and find out why that is before you being fake patches to make everyone feel good.

If you're American what have you got on the bad corner:

1) 9/11 terrorist attacks which killed more people than Pearl Harbor
2) Beheading of US citizens
3) 2 attacks on the World Trade Center
4) Bombings of US embassies in Africa
5) Constant threats against Israel (a US ally)
6) Moves towards Nuclear weapons
7) Distrust

If you're a "Muslim" nation:

1) Distrust of US policy
2) Wars in two Muslim lands
3) Bases in Muslim lands
4) Supposed mass casualties on civilians from three wars
5) Religious belief

Now why?

American:
1) You don't know any Muslims from Muslim nations
2) All you hear in the media is that Muslims => Terrorists
3) All you see printed is how Muslims want to destroy you
4) You're too busy watching American Idol to have time to hit the Internet and understand the youth of Muslim Nations if not actually, God forbid, go out and meet someone in real life.

Muslim Nations:
1) Religious ideology tells you that Infidels are to blame for *something*
2) Your only acquaintance with US Citizens comes in the form of the military
3) You don't understand what played out in the Cold War in Afghanistan
4) You are censored from doing your own research on topics of national flavor

How do you solve it, hard to tell. But from what I've seen of Iranian youth, trust me, they aren't too different from American youth...that just does not get publicized. They party, they drink, all the things US college kids do. We should focus on that youth group and make sure we don't do things that create, in their eyes, a reason to fear America. That is a start at least. Or better yet, maybe we should all just get 2nd Life accounts and mend the ills that way

[X5rolls]

I agree with your analysis on some Muslim youth. I was just reading about the Iranian population under 25 years old. They are fairly moderate and want policies that bring them together with the west vs. being somewhat in exile or against it.

I think the open hand approach vs. fist is not necessarily bad and saying that we need to repair our image isn't either. These combined with the plan for more open discussions could move the ball forward. It's pretty locical to be in a position in a few months or year for us to say hey, we are doing things differently, we are working to become more moderate towards Muslims - that really does put it squarely in the Muslim country leaderships court. Given the flow of information, it's hard (unless it's N Korea or China) to keep this knowledge to a few people. Moreover, it could give more motivation to the masses to not accept hardline policies against the west.

Obviously this is the plan at hand - it's not perfect but I do think it has as much a chance as any firm hardline approaches so far. Bottom line is if it doesn't work, we can always retreat to a fist vs. open hand. I'm still fearful that Congress and the Whitehouse won't have the guts to make the right hard calls if/when needed. But that has been a challenging area for Dems for many years.