Battling ideas

Karen Hughes has an unenviable job. As US under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, she is tasked to burnish US image overseas, particularly in hotbeds of radical Islam.

Hughes, who will be in Manila this week, is in the forefront of the Bush administration’s war on ideas that breed intolerance, extremism and terrorism.

She is the chief salesperson of values cherished by Americans: democracy, tolerance, universal human rights especially the right to life, the free market of goods and ideas.

It can be a tough sell in countries where many of those values are associated with the Devil and George W. Bush.

It is toughest in countries where the embrace of those values can threaten the survival of autocratic regimes that live on people’s ignorance and intolerance.

These are countries where hatred of the United States and everything that it stands for becomes a unifying factor that distracts people from the abuses of the ruling clique.

Aggravating these problems for Hughes are the genuine slips of the Bush administration, notably in Iraq, whose damage inflicted on the war on terror is not easily undone.

Hughes took over a post vacated by Margaret Tutwiler, who didn’t last a year on the job.

When Hughes left the White House for a quiet life with her family in Texas in 2002, the Bush administration was still basking in global sympathy over the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist strikes in New York and Washington. The US-led counterstrike in Afghanistan also went well, with the Taliban fleeing and Osama bin Laden reportedly heading for the forbidding mountains near the Pakistani border.

As the horrific images of 9/11 were flashed around the globe, the French expressed the sentiment of the free world: "We are all Americans."

Those were the days.

* * *

It’s been downhill since then for the Bush administration. Bush squandered much of the post-9/11 global goodwill by acting like a bullying, shoot-from-the-hip Texas cowboy.

The American values he is selling to the world were badly tarnished by Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Iraq is a quagmire, and Bush and his party paid dearly for it in the recent US elections.

No one likes being ordered around, not even by the world’s lone superpower and the largest single donor of foreign aid.

Filipinos should know this well: during the American colonial period, when our public education system and public health care were the envy of the region, Filipinos working for independence argued that they would rather have a country run like hell by their own rather than one run like heaven by the Americans.

The country, as we like to point out, is still being run like hell, but that’s another story.

Iraq is being run like hell, and unfortunately for Bush, the regime in Baghdad is backed by his government.

Western democracies were centuries in the making, and democracy, when it’s working, is still infinitely better than the repressive regime of Saddam Hussein. But for now the bloody chaos in Iraq on the road to democracy is what is playing out daily on cable TV. And the impression is that this is all the fault of that bullying cowboy at the White House.

Since Iraq’s descent into chaos, American credibility has been so eroded overseas that the ideal way for Hughes and her team to burnish US image is to reduce direct US involvement in other countries’ affairs.

This can be a delicate balancing act for a government that allots a substantial chunk of the national budget to development and humanitarian assistance overseas.

The White House must account to US taxpayers for every dollar spent in foreign assistance. In the past years, Bush has strengthened linkages between US foreign aid and cooperation in the war on terror. That war promotes the spread of democracy and everything that it stands for.

* * *

Hughes’ job isn’t too tough in this land where most people still have a fondness for all things American.

Even the conviction of a US Marine for raping a Filipina has failed to lead to a public groundswell for the expulsion of all US troops from the Philippines.

The Armed Forces of the Philippines was even quick to point out that it would be crippled in the anti-terrorism campaign if there is a significant reduction in US military assistance as a result of the flap over custody of Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith.

During Hughes’ visit, she will go to Sulu, as almost every US official does when dropping by this part of the world.

Sulu is virtually the second home of US Ambassador Kristie Kenney, who will accompany Hughes in meeting with US troops and inspecting development projects built with US assistance.

Kenney wants the annual Balikatan war exercises between the two countries to focus on humanitarian aspects rather than military training.

She told me her government also intended to increase other forms of military and development assistance to the Philippines that do not require direct US troop involvement. This includes bigger financial aid.

The tack, which the US is also trying to do in Iraq, is to reduce other countries’ dependence on direct US military involvement and to strengthen the capability of the local military in fighting terror.

At her Senate confirmation hearing, Hughes said the ideological battle against radical Islam and anti-Americanism required four E’s: "engagement, exchanges, education and empowerment."

It also requires a softer presence, so that American power comforts in its dependability rather than grates on the nerves of national pride.