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| Egyptians ... expressing love and hate of Americans |
Minds and hearts: We've always had it backwards. It's not
hearts then minds at all. If you want to capture the imagination of people
living in the Middle East and get them to warm to America, you don't play to
their emotions first. It's as if a new pretty bow on a package with the same
contents as ever is somehow going to help sell U.S. policy. It won't.
First, capture people's minds,
appeal to their cognitive self-interest and then their hearts will follow. That
would require a significant readjustment of U.S. policy: The U.S. would have to
be much tougher on Israel on settlements and practices such as land
confiscation, closures and withholding tax revenues in the West Bank.
The U.S. would have to be much
fairer when it came to Palestinian issues, including supporting reasonable
resolutions at the United Nations and taking positions in negotiations that really
did try to find an equitable balance, instead of viewing reality through a
pro-Israeli filter. The U.S. would still have a special relationship with our
close Israeli ally, just not an exclusive one.
The U.S. would have to be much
clearer about standing up to human rights abuses in the Arab world and much
tougher on the Arab kings where America is reluctant to offend its conservative
allies. People know where and what their interests are. And if we want to
improve our credibility, we'd need to find a fairer balance between theirs and
ours on many issues.
Syria FSA still has not received U.S promised weapons while every
sinlge day criminal assad carry out mass
killings
