Conflicting Images: Part 2

I wrote a post on 18 February, Conflicting Images, which discussed Secretary of State Clinton’s recent trip to Asia, and her attempts at outreach to the Muslim community.  The piece also discussed how Al Jazeera was attempting to improve its image with U.S. readers.  In the post I posited that maybe we should use some of Al Jazeera’s techniques for improving U.S. perception within the Muslim world.

Well, today I read an AP article, Terror Fight Must Include Battle of Ideas, about a study the Washington Institute for Near East Policy is preparing for release this week.  My key takeaways from the article were:

…the Washington Institute for Near East Policy argues that the U.S. must not only defeat terrorists, but also mute the influence of radical groups that spread extremist ideologies and can eventually lead to violence.

"We need to get beyond killing our way out of the problem," said J. Scott Carpenter, a former State Department policy adviser and one of the authors of the study. The key, he said, is to "empower Muslims within their communities to fight their own battles on the front lines of the ideological war."

The study, obtained by The Associated Press, suggests that instead of using goodwill ambassadors and other public relations campaigns to bolster opinions of the U.S. in Muslim countries, officials should build support for mainstream Muslim groups or activists to use their own voices to discount extremist discussions.

It will be interesting to see if the Obama administration chooses a different approach to this problem.  So far (and it's still early) they have essentially continued the Bush administrations strategy of using a “goodwill ambassador” (remember Karen Hughes) – in this case the Secretary of State – to reach out to the Muslim community; what I would call a top down approach.  According to the Washington Institute, we should employ a bottom up approach for this problem.  I suspect the correct answer, as usual, is going to fall somewhere in the middle…