Rumsfeld, media, network, Iraq, TelePolis:
Rumsfeld aber scheint vor allem auf das Standardargument jeder Regierung zu rekurrieren, dass nicht ihre Politik falsch ist oder auf Ablehnung stößt, sondern sie nur falsch von den Medien dargestellt wird. Deswegen muss dann mehr auf mediale Beeinflussung gesetzt werden, was die Unglaubwürdigkeit aber in aller Regel stärkt, zumal wenn Fehler und Probleme verheimlicht oder übertüncht werden sollen. Aber wie auch immer, wir werden, so lässt sich immer deutlicher absehen, noch sehr viel mehr mit Psychologischen Operationen, strategischer Kommunikation, Informationsoperationen oder anderen Medienkampagnen rechnen müssen, die das Image der US-Regierung aufpeppen sollen. ¹
Fukuyama, in the New York Times, via StefanKrempl ²:
We need in the first instance to understand that promoting democracy and modernization in the Middle East is not a solution to the problem of jihadist terrorism; in all likelihood it will make the short-term problem worse, as we have seen in the case of the Palestinian election bringing Hamas to power. Radical Islamism is a byproduct of modernization itself, arising from the loss of identity that accompanies the transition to a modern, pluralist society. It is no accident that so many recent terrorists, from Sept. 11’s Mohamed Atta to the murderer of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh to the London subway bombers, were radicalized in democratic Europe and intimately familiar with all of democracy’s blessings. More democracy will mean more alienation, radicalization and — yes, unfortunately — terrorism. ³
Yuck!! As if the world’s support of dictators from Morocco to Syria did not encourage fundamentalists at all.
The beginning seemed not too bad:
Were the United States to retreat from the world stage, following a drawdown in Iraq, it would in my view be a huge tragedy, because American power and influence have been critical to the maintenance of an open and increasingly democratic order around the world. The problem with neoconservatism’s agenda lies not in its ends, which are as American as apple pie, but rather in the overmilitarized means by which it has sought to accomplish them. What American foreign policy needs is not a return to a narrow and cynical realism, but rather the formulation of a “realistic Wilsonianism” that better matches means to ends. ⁴
Well, less trampling of civil rights and less emphasis on religious issues would be nice, in addition to less military might.
#USA