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| Presider: | James Sasser, former ambassador, People's Republic of China; U.S. Senator (D-Tenn.) |
|---|---|
| Speaker: | Henry Hyde, member, U.S. House of Representatives (R-IL); Chairman, House International Relations Committee |
June 17, 2002
Council on Foreign Relations
MR. SASSER: (Off mike)—today and just say to you that Henry Hyde is one of the most respected members of the House of Representatives. He was elected in 1974, not a good year for Republicans, following the Watergate problems. But he managed to make it anyway.
Prior to reaching the House of Representatives, he served as—in the state legislature of Illinois as majority leader.
In the House of Representatives of the United States, he has served on the House International Relations Committee since 1982. He now chairs that committee. From 1985 through 1991, our guest was the ranking member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. From 1995 through 2001, he was chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
Among his many accomplishments he has—he’s the father of four children, four grandchildren, so we suspect he had a good Father’s Day yesterday. And we want to welcome him here.
Mr. Chairman, before you get under way, there are a couple of housekeeping things I ought to say: one, to remind all of our assembled members here that unlike the council’s traditional rule of non-attribution, this meeting will be on the record. And we’re going to terminate this meeting promptly at 2:00 p.m. because our distinguished guest has other things to do as well.
So, Mr. Chairman, we welcome you here. We’re delighted you could come, and the floor is yours.
REP. HYDE: Thank you very much, Jim. It’s a real delight to see you again and to be in the company of so many distinguished people whose great interest is foreign policy.
You mentioned that I am a senior member of Congress. I may as well let you know that we don’t use the term “senior citizen” anymore. We say “chronologically gifted.” (Laughter.)
But I want to thank you for inviting me to speak on the subject of public diplomacy. As Americans, we’re justly proud of our country. If any nation has been a greater force for good in the long and tormented history of this world, I’m unaware of it. We’ve guarded whole continents from conquest, showered aid on distant lands, sent thousands of youthful idealists to remote and often inhospitable areas of the world’s forgotten.
Why, then, when we read or listen to descriptions of America in the foreign press, do we so often seem to be entering a fantasy land of hatred? Much of the popular press overseas, often including the government-owned media, daily depict the United States as a force for evil, accusing this country of an endless number of malevolent plots against the world. Even as we strike against the network of terrorists who masterminded the murder of thousands of Americans, our actions are widely depicted in the Muslim world as a war against Islam. Our efforts, however imperfect, to bring peace to the Middle East spark riots that threaten governments that dare to cooperate with us.
How has this state of affairs come about? How is it that the country that invented Hollywood and Madison Avenue has allowed such a destructive and parodied image of itself to become the intellectual coin of the realm overseas?
Over the years, the images of mindless hatred directed at us have become familiar fixtures on our television screens. All this time, we’ve heard calls that something must be done, but clearly, whatever has been done has not been enough. I believe that the problem is too great and too entrenched to be solved by tweaking an agency here or reshuffling a program there. If a strategy is not working, we should not insist on more of the same. Instead, we must begin rethinking our entire approach.
It’s increasingly clear that much of the problem lies in our ineffective and often antiquated methods. For example, broadcasts on shortwave radio simply cannot compete with AM and FM channels in terms of accessibility, to say nothing of television, the most powerful medium of all. Shifting our efforts into these and other broad-based media, including the Internet and others, will take time and money. But this reorientation is a prerequisite to reaching our intended audience.
But there’s a deeper problem. According to many observers, we have largely refused to participate in the contest for public opinion, and thereby allowed our enemy slanders to go unchallenged. The effort to avoid controversy has come at the cost of potential persuasion and of much of the reason to listen to us at all.
The results are sobering. In testimony last year before the House International Relations Committee, the chairman of the broadcasting board of governors which oversees our international broadcasting effort stated, and I quote, “We have virtually no youthful audience under the age of 25 in the Arab world,” close quote.
We have several tasks then. We must develop both the means of reaching a broader audience and also the compelling content that will persuade them to tune in. These objectives will not be easy to accomplish, especially in an increasingly competitive media environment, but they are prerequisite to our having an opportunity to present our case in clear and persuasive terms.
Our work does not stop there, for we must make our case not once, but over and over again, and be prepared to do so for decades to come. It is for that reason I’ve introduced legislation aimed at accomplishing these and other goals, legislation which I am proud to say enjoys broad bipartisan support. I’ve had great help from my Democrat counterpart, Tom Lantos, of California, who gives real meaning to the term bipartisan.
This bill, H.R. 3969 is divided into three sections. The first reshapes and refocuses the State Department’s public diplomacy program, including specifying a series of objectives to be attained and requiring an annual plan to be formulated to determine how these are to be implemented.
Far great prominence will be given to public diplomacy throughout all of the department’s activities, and greater resources will be made available to ensure these new responsibilities can be met.
The second section establishes a series of exchange programs focused on the Muslim world. Our purpose here is to lay the foundation for long-term changes in part of the world to which we have given far too little attention. As we respond to the immediate problems before us, we must remember that the task we face has no obvious endpoint.
The third section of the bill reorganizes our international broadcasting services in order to prepare them for far-reaching and innovative reforms. Given the importance of broadcasting to our larger purpose, we cannot afford to be constrained by how we have always done things. New approaches and enhanced resources will be central to any prospect of winning an expanded audience. This bill is but the first step in that direction.
To this end, we’ve authorized $135 million to launch an ambitious effort into television broadcasting. This bill has already passed our committee unanimously, and the House will soon have an opportunity to take it up, then we’ll move on to the Senate with the intention, hopefully, of giving the president a bill to sign later this year.
Permit me to speak now of the larger purpose of our public diplomacy efforts. To some that purpose is self-evident: to provide objective news and information to convey an accurate and positive image of America, and to present and explain U.S. foreign policy. Unquestionably, these are essential functions. If we do them well, they will comprise an indispensable voice of clarity regarding our foreign policy, one otherwise absent from the world’s airways. However, I believe that public diplomacy’s potential is even greater. To understand that, we must first understand that half of our foreign policy is missing. Let me explain.
As the most powerful actor in the international system, the U.S. conducts the world’s only global foreign policy, one that dwarfs in extent and resources that of any other country. Its range extends across the entire spectrum, from the political and military to the economic and cultural, and centers on an elaborate array of relationships with virtually every sovereign government from Russia to Vatican City, with scores of international organizations rounding out the total.
Nevertheless, for some years now, scholars have talked about the emergence in world politics of what they call non-state actors. While the nation state remains the primary actor in the world stage, it’s no longer the only one. In certain instances, what nation states do and don’t do is heavily conditioned by what those non-state actors do and don’t do. Poland’s Solidarity movement in the 1980s is a powerful example of a non-state actor which had a dramatic and positive impact on the course of events. I needn’t remind anyone that al Qaeda has demonstrated a contrary ability to sow destruction.
Thus, it should be obvious to all that the dynamics of world politics are no longer determined by foreign policy professionals only. As important as they are, what they think and do is conditioned by what is happening in the hearts and minds of almost 7 billion human beings on a shrinking globe in an age of almost instantaneous information. That is why public diplomacy—the effort to persuade those hearts and minds of the truth about our purposes in the world—must be a crucial part of our foreign policy effort.
My point is this: Our focus on our relations with foreign governments and international organizations has led us to overlook a set of powerful allies—the peoples of the world. Uniquely among the world’s powers, a dense network connects the United States with the population of virtually every country on the planet, a network that is independent of any formal state-to-state interactions. On one level this is not surprising. As the preeminent political, military and economic power, the presence of the United States is a daily fact of life in most areas of the globe. America’s cultural impact is even broader, penetrating to the most forbiddingly remote areas of the world with a range continually expanded by the boundless reach of electronic media.
But there’s an even deeper connection, a bond that derives from the universal values America represents. More than a simple wish list of desirable freedoms, at their core is the belief that these values have universal application, that they are inherent in individuals and people by right of their humanity and not by the grace of the powerful and the unelected. They provide hope, even for those populations which have never experienced hope.
The advancement of freedom has been a prominent component of American foreign policy since this country’s inception. Given the nature of the American people, it’s certain to remain so. But in addition to genuine altruism, our promotion of freedom can have another purpose, namely as an element in the United States geopolitical strategy. Despite the laments and exasperation of the practitioners of realpolitik, regarding what they see as our simplistic and naive images of the world, we haven’t done so badly. That virtually the entire continent of Europe is free and secure today is largely due to America’s powerful and beneficent embrace, one that stretches unbroken from the landings in Normandy to the present day.
The history of the last century taught us many lessons, one of the most important being that the desire for freedom we share with others can be a remarkably powerful weapon for undermining geopolitical threats. The prime example is the Soviet Union. Decades of enormous effort on the part of the United States and the West aimed at containing and undermining the threat posed by the Soviet empire enjoyed considerable success. But it was only with the advent of democracy in Russia and the other nations of the Soviet prison house that the communist regime was finally destroyed and, with it, the menace it posed to us and the world as a whole.
This should be a deep lesson for us, but it’s one that curiously remains unlearned by some of our foreign policy establishment. Candidates for the application of this lesson come readily to mind. The list of countries posing threats to the United States, such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea, contain no democracies. All are repressive. All maintain their rule by coercion.
Given the closed nature of these regimes, the conventional tools available to the United States are frustratingly limited, often amounting to little more than a mix of sanctions, condemnation and diplomatic isolation. Despite great effort on our part, each of these regimes continues its course toward the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, holding out the frightening prospect of a vast increase in their ability to do harm to the United States and its interests.
An even greater challenge lies in the emergence of China. China’s rapidly growing strength cannot but have a profound impact on the international system. Were the government in Beijing to maintain its apparently zero-sum view of the world, China’s influence could expand in East Asia and elsewhere only at the expense of that of the United States.
Even more troubling is that the regime has consciously chosen to bolster its fading ideological legitimacy with an open appeal to a xenophobic nationalism.
Although China’s emergence is likely to pose the single greatest strategic challenge the U.S. faces in the 21st century, our conventional tools for affecting its course are quite modest. But in our search for leverage against the regime’s potentially destructive ambitions, we have overlooked our most powerful ally—namely, the Chinese people. The source of that leverage is a shared goal, political freedom in China, and the common impediment, the regime in Beijing.
Far from being merely a domestic concern, the issue of political freedom in China is directly relevant to the U.S. Were China to become a democracy, its adversarial impact on our influence and interests might well be minimized or even avoided altogether and the prospect of genuine cooperation placed within reach. One need only compare our current relationships with democratic Germany, Japan and Russia to those with the dictatorial predecessors to understand the transformative role democracy can play.
Here, again, the fate of the Soviet empire provides an instructive example of how peaceful change can be encouraged by those outside. To secure its rule, the Soviet regime trained its vast powers on all who would dissent, dividing and isolating the population and even sending in the tanks when necessary, in an effort to deny hope to any challengers. But the West was able to provide hope anyway, with the role of two individuals being especially important.
The first was the election of Pope John Paul II. His initial message to his countrymen in Poland told them, “Be not afraid.” From that beginning, a mass movement took shape. Solidarity was born, and the Polish regime began its unstoppable slide to oblivion. Poland is now free.
Equally significant was the election of Ronald Reagan. Against the advice of many, Reagan refused to tame his remarks about the Soviet Union. When he called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” he was openly derided by many in the West as an ideologue or a warmonger and especially by those who asserted that our interests lay in an accommodation with the regime. Many dismissed his declaration as empty words, but veterans of the democracy movement in the former Soviet Union point to his statement as a turning point in their struggle, for it was the first time that a Western leader had called the Soviet Union by its real name and openly stated that the regime was illegitimate and proclaimed it mortal.
It was an unambiguous statement that, at long last, America was casting its lot with the powerless and not with the all-powerful regime; a declaration that we would never abandon the oppressed merely to secure better relations with their oppressors.
That infusion of hope, the unambiguous declaration that America was openly aligning itself with those who were struggling against impossible odds, helped set in motion the events which dissolved the Soviet Union almost without a shot being fired. We know the importance of the role played by the West because those who led that resistance have repeatedly told us. We must understand that although the long decades of pressure by the West on Moscow were essential to its demise in the end, it was the victory of our allies within, the unfree peoples of the Soviet Union, which actually vanquished the empire.
The U.S. can play a similar role in China. The knowledge that the United States supports their efforts, that it is choosing to openly align itself with their aspirations instead of ignoring these in its pursuit of better relations with the regime, would be of immense importance to members of the beleaguered Chinese democracy movement. We can articulate a forbidden message that the regime will not allow its people to voice. The regime will not allow them to speak, but it cannot silence us.
How can we best do this? By publicly proclaiming that it is and will remain the goal of the United States to help the people of China peacefully bring to power a democratic government that they have chosen in free and fair elections. President Bush should make this statement openly and the Congress should do as well. Such statements may be come a central element of our public diplomacy in its broadest and most effective sense.
I’ve used the term “alliance” when speaking of our relationships with peoples around the world, and I don’t use the term lightly, nor is it merely a figure of speech. Although our global responsibilities require us to maintain a full complement of official interactions with regimes around the world and even to cultivate good relations with them, we must remember that our true allies are the people they rule over. We are allies because we share a common aim, which is freedom, and we have a common opponent, oppressive regimes hostile to democracy.
Now, does this mean we must cast our lot with the uncertain prospects of the oppressed around the world and forego cooperation with their ruling regimes? Must we renounce traditional foreign policy goals and even our own interests in the name of revolution? Obviously, the answer is no. Adopting such a course would be profoundly foolish and would quickly prove to be unsustainable. Our interests require that we have allies, even close allies, whose hold on power does not necessarily rest on the consent of the governed.
The first and enduring priority of American foreign policy is and must remain the promotion of the interests of the American people.
But our desire to help others must not be confused with an obligation to do so. But neither should we ignore the necessity of maintaining our connections with the populations of those governments whose cooperation we need, but whose tenure in power is not eternal.
This, then, is the purpose I would set for our public diplomacy and for our foreign policy as a whole: to engage our allies among the peoples of the world. This must include public pronouncements from the president and from the Congress that clearly state the long-term objectives of foreign policy. We must have good relations with the world’s governments, but this must be complemented by our speaking past the regime and the elites and directly to the people themselves.
Over a quarter center of life in Washington has taught me how difficult it is to change ingrained habits of thought. Still, I am convinced that our system of government is flexible enough to accommodate new ideas and new approaches to old problems. For all of America’s enormous power, transforming the world is too heavy a burden to attempt alone, but we’re not alone. The peoples of the world represent an enormous reservoir of strategic resources waiting to be utilized, and the formula is a simple one: We can best advance our own interests not by persuading others to adopt our agenda, but by helping them achieve their own freedom. In so doing, we must always remember that though we have many vocal opponents, these are vastly outnumbered by the legions of our silent allies.
Charles de Gaulle once said, “France would not be true to herself if she weren’t engaged in some great enterprise.” A public diplomacy rooted in a robust defense and promotion of American ideals is an idea whose time has come. In creating an activist public diplomacy of this type, we will be true to ourselves and to our convictions, and moreover, we will advance a foreign policy capable of leading the world to peace, security, freedom and justice. Now that’s a great enterprise. Thank you. (Applause.)
MR. SASSER: Well thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for that—those thoughts.
Let me say, first, that for those who wish to ask questions, would you stand, clearly state your name and affiliation, and wait for the microphone to come to you before questioning the speaker.
Mr. Chairman, I may use my prerogative as the moderator here to ask the first question, with no objection. I note in your speech you indicated that you see China as a potential threat. Early on in the new administration, we heard similar statements being made, coming chiefly out of the Department of Defense, and then some statements to that effect coming out of Congress.
Now since 9/11, there seems to have been a change. Since 9/11 the president of the United States has made two visits to China. The secretary of State has been there. The vice president of China and the likely next president, Hu Jintao, has been to the United States. We now see that the United States is China’s largest trading partner. And even as we speak, an assistant secretary of the Department of Defense is traveling to China, ostensibly to reinstitute military-to- military contacts between the government of China and the government of the United States.
My question to you would be, is it your view that—or is it not your view that following the 9/11 tragedy, that our policy towards China may be changing more in the direction of accommodation, grouping around the common interest of trying to deal with the problem of international terrorism?
REP. HYDE: Well, I hope our policy isn’t changing. We have always welcomed friendship with China. China is certainly an enormously important factor in the world.
But we need to see the election in—on Taiwan, which resulted in a democratic election and a transference of power from the Kuomintang, which had been in power for so many years, to another party, peacefully, was a wonderful example of how democracy can work, and work with Chinese people. There’s nothing impossible in that.
We would like to see—I would like to see more democracy in China, less oppression. I would like to see them not transferring dual-use technology or other technology susceptible of military utilization to other countries in the world, particularly Iran. I don’t certainly write China off. I think it’s critical that we have improving relations with them. We have seen a mellowing following 9/11. We’ve seen it, certainly, in Russia. Whether it’s genuine and not just superficial remains to be seen, but I do take note of that with some happy anticipation that it will deepen and continue.
MR. SASSER: Who’d like the first question from the audience?
Please stand and state your name and affiliation.
Q Alan Wendt (sp). I was in the Department of State for a number of years as a career foreign service officer. Mr. Chairman, people in the government will say that one of the problems we face in public diplomacy is that we simply don’t have enough linguistically trained people who can appear in television programs, talk shows, radio programs, that sort of informal activity, as opposed to speeches which are given by senior officials and then translated and disseminated. Particularly since September 11, one can easily see the importance of that kind of activity. I notice, in glancing through the summary of your legislation, there’s no specific reference to enhancement of language skills among people in the U.S. government. Perhaps it’s implied, but it’s not spelled out. Would that not be a good idea?
REP. HYDE: It surely is, and I thought it was in my legislation. And Doug, tell me, is it?
MR. : Yes, sir, it is.
Q I didn’t see it in the summary.
REP. HYDE: Apparently the summary is a little too summary. (Laughter.) We do—we do recognize that as a major problem and we do plow some significant dollars in towards recruiting language specialists, not just formal, but the street language, too.
MR. SASSER: Question? This lady here and this one.
REP. HYDE: This lady here?
Q Thank you. Mr. Chairman, Wei Jing (sp) from (Phoenix ?) TV of Hong Kong. I have two questions on China. One is, some Chinese will argue we don’t go around and criticize America’s policy. Why should Americans mind our business? That’s number one question. And the second question is, with all the nuclear posture review, with the nuclear submarines home based in Guam now from Maine, with the U.S. selling missiles to Japan and some other countries, how do you convince the Chinese that the U.S. is not their threat?
REP. HYDE: Well, first of all, I will concede that the Chinese are not used to criticizing their government, and—but we have a very free means of communication in our country, and we are critical of countries who abuse human rights.
The stories out of China are enough to be very painful to people who concern themselves about human rights. We are also concerned about China’s military strength and the selling or delivering of technology that could be used to create a war. And that’s everybody’s business.
And the second one was about Chinese—American submarines. Why do—you mean that we’re arming Taiwan and therefore why aren’t we a threat to China?
Q (Off mike)—submarines are now home-based in Guam so that the—(off mike)—Pacific region—they were not there before.
Mr. SASSER: For those who can’t hear, she’s saying that—her contention is that now American submarines that previously were not in the Pacific are now being home-based in Guam. Is that the question?
Q (Off mike.)
REP. HYDE: Well, the mere fact that they’re based there—you think some believe that constitutes a threat? We don’t think so. (Chuckles; laughter.) The Pacific is a vast area, and Guam is a logical place for us to have our ships based. We’re a global power, and so we utilize the ports of Guam. But I don’t think we’ve ever made a hostile gesture towards China. And I just think that’s an unreasonable fear.
MR. SASSER: Yes, sir. The gentleman back in the back, in the green checked shirt. Have you got a microphone to him there, please?
REP. HYDE: She can’t give him --
MR. SASSER: Can you see him?
REP. HYDE: We can probably hear you. Go ahead.
Q It’s not me.
MR. SASSER: Oh, I thought you were standing to ask a question. (Soft laughter.) My goodness; it’s the camera man! (Laughter.) I HAVE been out of politics a long time. (Laughs.) Yes, sir.
Q I’m Bob Vanderlik (sp), from Vincent & Elkins (sp). You talked a lot about some successful examples from the end of the Cold War and from the recent past about public diplomacy in Poland and elsewhere and about Solidarity. If you’re thinking ahead to how public diplomacy would be effective in the Arab world or, specifically, in Muslim countries—maybe even more particularly those that are under Shari’a—how do you see that connecting? I mean, in what institutions—I mean, it wouldn’t obviously be a labor union, like Solidarity. Can you sketch out for us how public diplomacy is likely to be effective in an Arab country and how it will need to be different from the way in which we’ve addressed it to countries in Eastern Europe, for instance?
REP. HYDE: Well, I think we’ve had an underemphasis on the notion of telling the story of America’s freedom and the human rights that we advocate and that we tolerate, and we do more, and we protect and try to spread. I think there has been a feeling that the international broadcasting is a governmental version of CNN and that anything that smacks of propaganda is, by definition, wrong. I don’t feel that way. I think we should always tell the truth. I think our credibility is very important. And the only thing that damages our credibility would be telling lies and being caught at it. But I think we, at the same time, can blow our own horn and try to educate people that we are not hateful, that we are for freedom and we are for the values that every human being in their heart and soul really wants.
The problem is, how do we reach the Muslim whose goal in life is to have a theocracy? See, that is just the opposite of what we want, but it may be the driving engine of what they do. And how can we explain and get across to them that a theocracy is intolerant of members outside the theocracy, and they are not to be killed or imprisoned, but to be tolerated? That’s a big selling job, and it’s going to take some doing, but we have to do it.
MR. SASSER: Yes?
Q Thank you. Mark Jacobsen (sp), Office of the Secretary of Defense. Sir, there’s something we like to talk about in public diplomacy, the three C’s, and you seemed to have addressed them in the new bill: content, credibility and capturing audiences.
With that in mind, I was hoping you could comment on where you see Voice of America or some other U.S. government-funded international broadcasting elements going in light of this bill. Specifically, should we be moving towards more of a BBC-style of broadcasting? Arguably, the BBC has credibility, they have the content that captures the audiences worldwide. But one thing BBC has that we don’t in the United States, especially the VOA, BBC content is not controlled by the U.S. government (sic). And as you’re well aware, during --
Q British government.
Q I’m sorry. By the British government. Excuse me.
During the early stages of the global war on terrorism, there was an incident at Voice of America where a potential interview by Mullah Omar was delayed largely because the feeling was that it would be too propagandistic for the other side, that is, to put it on there.
So I was wondering if you could comment on where you saw your bill going with regards to that.
REP. HYDE: Well, again, credibility is critical. I think we waste all the time and effort and resources if people don’t believe what we say. So that has to be established.
But at the same time, I think the purpose is to sell the values that we believe in and that we have fought and died for and that we want to share with other people.
The more democracies in the world, the less threatening they are. And so I
think we can carry that message to people through people who have credibility
locally. These are the functions of those who will be running our broadcasting.
And we have Charlotte Beers, who is the secretary for public diplomacy. Credential-wise—I know her casually, but credential- wise, she’s exactly what we need, and I’m hoping she’s able to succeed in what she does. We have a product to sell and we need to sell it, but we need to sell it credibly. But it’s unsold right now and needs to be sold. We have to reach the kids, the young people, before they become walking bombs.
MR. SASSER: General Scowcroft?
Q Mr. Chairman, there’s a very practical illustration of some of the problems we face. We’re a democracy, Israel’s a democracy.
MR. SASSER: General, would you identify yourself? We all know you, but the C-Span audience --
Q I thought I did. Brent Scowcroft, Forum for International Policy.
In the Middle East there is Al-Jazeera Television. It is not government-owned. And what it shows evening after evening throughout the whole region are American F-16s bombing Palestinian villages, Israeli bulldozers and tanks wiping out shops, and so on and so forth. How do you counter that sort of thing with your bill? It looks—it’s a picture of democracy that, the way it’s presented, doesn’t make a democracy look all that attractive. And a government-owned antidote to Al-Jazeera may not, by its very nature, be credible.
REP. HYDE: First of all, Brent, I want to say that as you stood there asking that question, the light behind you gave you a saintly halo. (Laughter.)
I think there are things we can show other than aircraft bombing installations. I think we can show kids in a classroom. We can show people working. We can show people having a decent meal, having hope, having education, even practicing their religion, as benefits from democracy and benefits from the West. We can’t stop Al-Jazeera, nor should we, showing whatever they want to show, but we have got to sell our way of life, which, in my judgment, we must believe is infinitely superior.
These people have no hope. If we can figure out a way to give them hope—it has been my fervent wish, and before I die, I hope I see it, a Marshall Plan for the Middle East, where they can have hope of getting an education, a decent place to live, hospitals, jobs, all of that. We did it and saved Europe. We can do it and calm down the Middle East, give these people hope. Right now, they’re utterly hopeless, full of despair, nothing to do but throw stones or fire a gun if they can get one. But if they could know that the prospect of a decent life is really there, something might give at one of the tables. And I hope so. But that could form the subject matter of some very interesting television and radio.
General Rowney?
Q Ed Rowney, a former arms controller. Mr. Chairman, going back to a question, several back, about theocracy and trying to reach the people, particularly in the Arab world, isn’t there some way that we can appeal to the mullahs to say, look, we’re not against Islam, and the Koran doesn’t teach suicide bombers and so forth. Is there some way we can appeal to these people to join the fight and speak out more forcibly against suicide bombers and against that element of their population? In other words, to be a little radical about it, say, all right, we’ll ex-communicate you if you preach these things.
REP. HYDE: One thing we need desperately are people from within Islam who will condemn the excesses, the suicide bombings. We don’t have that now. We need that. We need to find people who can be listened to with some authority on the theology of what they’re doing. And we need to find those people and give them a forum, a (format ?) and a forum to counter the hate that is the product of the mullahs.
MR. SASSER: Let’s have a question from a woman here. This lady in the pink suit.
Q Phoebe Moore (sp), formerly from the National Defense University. Mr. Chairman, I’ve just spent nine months off and on in Qatar, home of Al-Jazeera, keeping a close watch on this. And I’d like to sort of respond to the effort of selling America. The evidence is that the regimes in the Gulf, which are certainly not destitute, and neither the population of course are not poor—poverty is not the issue. The regimes and the older generation trained in America are pro-American. Our problem is with the younger generation. And all the evidence there is that they’re increasingly sort of conservative, interested in Islamic ideology, anti-American, and the problem—and educated at home. The problem is how to reach them. And it’s true that they want democracy and freedom, but it’s not clear to me that if, you know, we had a free vote tomorrow, that they would end up voting for our brand of democracy. I would like to ask, in your bill and your sense of it in Congress, in reaching this generation, what sort of things are you doing to listen to them and find out what we would be able to do to get a message to reach them?
REP. HYDE: Those are the things that we would ask people like you to help us with, frankly. (Soft laughter.) You have a world of experience. You’ve been there. You’ve done that. We can see the goal, but how we get there is what we need guidance on. And experts like yourself, who have lived in the area and know the real problem, can help us.
What—you asking the question indicates it’s a tough problem—tough for you, and how much more tough for us! But we must address it.
MR. SASSER: The chairman’s staff has indicated that he’s going to have to leave here by 1:40. So we’ve got time for one more question.
REP. HYDE: There’s a lady way in the back there who has her hand up.
MR. SASSER: All right.
Q Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Andrea Strimling. I’m with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. And my question pertains to the strategy for building our governmental and, I’d say, civil society capacity for effective public diplomacy. There are a number of federal agencies and also other organizations outside of the foreign policy establishment who are engaged overseas and have the capacity to help with this effort. So how can the U.S. government support, encourage and further strengthen the capacity of these other organizations, including small ones, to be part of this effort?
REP. HYDE: I think you’re highlighting a very important aspect—namely, outside the box, we have to find anybody who has something to contribute, and welcome them to the table and pick their brains and maybe hire them or find some way to exploit the information they have and the knowledge they have. It’s a big globe. This is a global problem, and things are different in Indonesia than Sri Lanka. So there will be a lot of that.
But the private, nongovernmental sector—my goodness, you’ve got people who have worked in oil fields for years over in Saudi Arabia, or worked in other places, that have specialized knowledge that we need to know about.
So this is a massive job.
MR. SASSER: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. We very much appreciate you joining us today and sharing your views on your new legislation with us.(Applause.)
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