US embassy cable - 04AMMAN1110

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 AMMAN 001110 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR NEA/ARN, NEA/PA, NEA/AIA, INR/NESA, R/MR, 
I/GNEA, B/BXN, B/BRN, NEA/PPD, NEA/IPA FOR ALTERMAN 
USAID/ANE/MEA 
LONDON FOR GOLDRICH 
PARIS FOR O'FRIEL 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
 
TAGS: KMDR JO 
SUBJECT: MEDIA REACTION ON U.S. POLICY IN MIDDLE EAST 
 
                        Summary 
 
-- Lead story in all papers today, February 12, 
focuses on an earthquake that hit the region, 
including Jordan, yesterday morning.  Lead stories 
also address continued violence in both the 
Palestinian Territories and Iraq. 
 
                 Editorial Commentary 
 
-- "The democracy of killing and racism" 
 
Daily columnist Khaled Mahadin opines on the op-ed 
page of semi-official, influential Arabic daily Al-Rai 
(02/12):  "The latest ingenuity of the alliance of the 
racist Zionism and the racist American Christian right- 
wing is the encroachment of American democracy upon 
us.  This invasion is part of a new American war, that 
uses not the blind American war machine, but rather 
thoughts and ideas, as declared by Rumsfeld and 
Powell..  Over more than sixty years, the United 
States was the greatest supporter of fascist, military 
and totalitarian regimes in the Arab and Muslim world, 
in Asia, and South America.  Because of this support, 
millions of people were killed here and there, 
nationalist liberation movements were aborted in 
dozens of countries, and the United States provided 
full protection for tens of dictators and murderers. 
This is why America's talk of invading the Arab world, 
the Middle East and the Muslim world with what 
Washington calls democracy is amusing.  The first step 
was Afghanistan and the second step was Iraq.  We do 
not think that any sane person in our world could even 
take America's new call seriously, simply because 
Washington knows that democracy in the Arab and Muslim 
world will yield the real enemy of America's interests 
and plans.  Real democracy will not bring into power 
regimes and leaderships that accept to work under the 
American umbrella, or take its orders, or even allow 
it to wreath corruption, conspiracy and racism against 
Islam, real Christianity and Arab nationalism..  The 
American democracy that Washington is calling for as 
being in our best interest is another form of the 
destructive invasion that is targeting the Arab 
homeland and the Muslim world to benefit the Zionist 
enemy and the Christian right-wing..  The American 
animosity towards Arabism, Arabs, Islam and Muslims 
makes this call for democracy another lie in the 
mountain-worth of American lies." 
 
-- "A large Middle East!" 
 
Daily columnist Tarek Masarweh writes on the back page 
of semi-official, influential Arabic daily Al-Rai 
(02/12):  "The most significant presence that 
Washington has managed to achieve in the region to 
date is its military presence, not democracy, not 
human rights.  The changes in the region that 
Washington likes to pride itself of are nothing but 
changes on the surface resulting from fear, 
degradation and bribery..  Democracy cannot be 
established in this region without real peace that 
stops Israel - and the United States - from military 
occupation and invasion, threatening, and stealing the 
Arab fortunes.  As for terrorism that Washington is 
waving its arms about, it is the making of Washington 
itself.  It is the incubator and it pushes for it with 
the desperation, frustration and humiliation that it 
invokes in the region.  Looking for the roots of 
terrorism is this region's religion is but another 
humiliation that pushes people even more towards that 
type of violence.  The Americans and their allies 
would do well to leave freedom, democracy and human 
rights to grow in this part of the world, without 
their military boots and their hamburgers and without 
the moral degradation." 
 
-- "The American public diplomacy hoax: why do they 
keep insulting us?" 
 
Opinion writer Rami Khouri writes on the op-ed page of 
centrist, influential among the elite English daily 
Jordan Times (02/11):  "The serious controversy over 
Washington's use or misuse of intelligence on Iraq's 
weapons of mass destruction program is not an isolated 
phenomenon.  It reflects a much deeper weakness in how 
the United States interacts with cultures such as 
those of the Middle East.  We can watch this clash of 
cultures taking place before our eyes in other fields, 
such as the U.S. government's use of broadcasting and 
print media to influence attitude vis--vis the U.S. 
in the Arab Islamic world..  Arabs and Americans are 
like ships passing in the night, sounding their horns, 
firing their guns, making known their views, but 
having no impact on the other.  The epitome of this is 
the widening gap between Arabs' perceptions of the 
U.S. and many Americans' flawed interpretations of 
those Arab perceptions. 
 
Khouri continues:  "The American president's 
intellectual terror (`they hate our freedom') is 
simplistic, wrong and dangerous and an inappropriate 
and ineffective retort to the world views of the 
criminals who have terrorized and killed thousands of 
Americans and other nationals.  Scores of public 
opinion polls, focus groups and others have confirmed 
a thousand times over that most Arabs and Muslims 
admire basic American values, but are angered 
primarily by American foreign policies and, to a 
lesser extent, the arrogant manner in which the U.S. 
presents its views and dictates policy to the world. 
A common intellectual, cultural and political response 
to this in the United States is that something is 
deeply wrong in Arab and Islamic societies, and must 
be fixed, including education curricula, governance 
systems, economic trends, women's conditions and the 
mass media..  If the U.S. really wanted to make the 
Middle East a better place and the U.S. a safer place, 
it should start by examining the impact of its own and 
Israel's policies on the Arab-Islamic world, as well 
as exploring faults within Arab-Islamic societies.. 
At many levels today - Palestine/Israel, Iraq, the war 
against terror, mass media, public diplomacy, 
democratic reform, religion and secularism - Americans 
and Arabs are interacting, but not communicating. 
 
Khouri concludes:  "The Middle East is a mess, America 
has been attacked, and anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli 
sentiments are at an all-time high in the region and 
the world.  By arguing that our region is troubled and 
violent because Arabs and Muslims hate American 
values, and then attempting to correct this by 
launching television, radio and magazine efforts in 
Arabic, the U.S. government perpetuates a fatal 
combination of political blindness and cultural 
misperception that is only going to exacerbate the gap 
between Americans and Arabs, rather than close it.. 
Al-Hurra [the U.S. Arabic-language satellite TV 
channel], like the U.S. government's Radio Sawa and Hi 
magazine before it, will be an entertaining, expensive 
and irrelevant hoax.  Where do they get this stuff? 
Why do they keep insulting us like this?" 
GNEHM