"The fight against terrorism must be fought in air, on land and on the seas, but particularly on the airwaves," Rep. Tom Lantos, R-Calif., said during a recent House International Relations Committee hearing on the role of public diplomacy in U.S. antiterrorism efforts.
The official government broadcasting organizations, such as Voice of America, said Lantos, have been outmaneuvered by tyrants, including terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who have distributed proliferatedanti-American sentiment through neophyte Arab media channels, in particular the Qatar-based Al Jazirah television network based in Qatar. These tyrants include terrorist Osama bin Laden as well as Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, he said.
"We've been losing the propaganda campaign to publicize who is responsible for conditions in Iraq," following the end of the 1991 Gulf War, concurred Berman agreed. As a result, Saddam Hussein's role in perpetuating the suffering of the Iraqi people has been lost on much of the world - including many U.S. allies, he said.
The U.S. government should launch a concerted campaign to win over Afghanistan and the scores of other nations around globe that are subjected to daily misinformation and vicious hate directed against the United States, said Lantos.
The current official U.S. media presence in the Muslim world lacks the resources to compete effectively with its anti-Western counterparts, said Berman. Networks such as Radio Free Europe and the State Department's Voice of America produce short-wave and AM programming that is barely audible in many of the 22 Middle Eastern countries that receive the broadcasts, he said.
Meanwhile, Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., has urged his colleagues to pass the Radio Free Afghanistan Act of 2001, HR 2998. Introduced in the House Oct. 2, this bill authorizes $8 million in funding for 2002 to expand the scope of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty network to include 12-hour daily FM broadcasts for the Afghan people in regional languages of Pashto and Dari.
The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush must take public diplomacy more seriously, said Lantos. He urged Bush to allocate "whatever funding is necessary" out of the $40 billion in emergency supplemental funding the president signed into law Sept. 18 to bolster official U.S. media accessibility in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world and to undertake other public diplomatic efforts, such as cultural and educational exchanges, aimed at Muslim youth.
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