Summary BY RAMI G. KHOURI, THE DAILY STAR, LEBANON
Rarely has amateurism in American foreign policy in the Middle East been as glaring and shocking as it has been in the past year with regard to Washington’s policy toward ISIS.
In almost every aspect of American policy related to Iraq, Syria and ISIS – threat analysis, addressing key underlying causal factors, policy formulation, geo-strategic coordination, military strategy and operations, and public diplomacy – Washington’s approach has consistently asked the wrong questions, identified the wrong threats, used the wrong tools, and applied wrong policies.
Ever since the idiocy of George W. Bush’s Global War on Terror in 2001-2002, the American government has assumed that positive media messages through a public diplomacy campaign would dry up recruits to Al-Qaeda – and now to ISIS.
The memo to Secretary of State John Kerry by Richard A. Stengel, the State Department’s under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, paints a sad picture of a public diplomacy multinational coalition in disarray, but also proposes a more focused and enhanced effort to do more of the same kind of messaging using social media to counter ISIS narratives.
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Categories: Arab World, Asia, Iraq, Syria
Strangely enough I have a higher regard for the Americans than most. Usually comments say that ‘the Americans do not have a policy’, ‘the Americans were not well prepared’. Come on: they are not that stupid. They planned destabilization and destruction and that is what they are achieving excellently!