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Barack Obama's interview on TV al-Arabiya was covered from the Middle East by NBC and ABC. ABC's Simon McGregor-Wood (embargoed link) filed from Jerusalem on a "sea change" message compared with how President George Bush--"You are either with us or against us"-- was received. Reporting In Depth from Baghdad, NBC's Richard Engel replayed Bush's 2001 declaration that his War on Terrorism is a "crusade." Engel reported that Obama "has taken the Moslem World by surprise, speaking with unexpected candor and respect." In the interview, he referred to his Moslem kin and onetime residence in Islamic lands. Yet Engel reminded us that Bush "spent hundreds of millions of dollars to win hearts and minds" to no avail. The United States' Arab language TV channel al-Hurra "is barely watched." ABC's McGregor-Wood was similarly cautious: "The President's new language is buying goodwill where it is desperately needed but people here are looking for results."
Elizabeth Palmer, who continues her tour in Afghanistan for CBS (last week's reports are here and here), demonstrated a specific mechanism whereby the United States attracts a negative reputation in Moslem society. She outlined the propaganda contest between the foreign military and Taliban guerrillas over dead Afghan civilians: are villagers killed in a US raid neighbors or enemy fighters? "It is very, very difficult to say you are going to avoid any loss of civilian life," was how Gen David McKiernan of the USArmy put it to Palmer. By very, very difficult he meant impossible. "We try to avoid it. The insurgent does it on purpose," the general explained. Nevertheless that US military admits responsibility for 20% of all civilian deaths; it blames the Taliban for 80%. "This interview will be used by the Taliban," McKiernan predicted. "They will use it to say that US forces kill innocent civilians."
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