The following is a response to a friend's blog posting on misconceptions and our government. I'm only including one line because I haven't asked if I can include the entire entry...
“Hence, the misconceptions persist and our government blows people up.”I know our government sources for intelligence especially in regards to the MENA region are shoddy, but I do think it’s better than their simply watching programming on Canadian TV with a 22 year old undergrad discussing MENA policies. [that was refered to in the original post] Your tying this together with our government blowing people up is perhaps not the best conclusion. Yes, this may be how the general public opinion amongst citizens is formed—, but the government, even under this administration, deserves a little more credit for information gathering through better means. Whether or not they choose to apply that information versus having our intelligence analysts re-write certain portions to reflect an easier path towards a particular political agenda is a separate issue.
I think its rather interesting how your conclusion goes from misconceptions persisting to the government blowing up people, making it seem like the blame for everything is only on the government. Misconceptions are formed in public opinion (which in this case I do distinguish from political knowledge or intelligence gather) through the type of programming you mentioned—which is something that the academics in the field like your friend should strive to better represent or if they cant or are not properly equipped to handle, at the very least own up to their lack of personal expertise—or rather as Z indicates “we live and that means we can do something about it.”
Granted there are many academics that are opposed to our foreign policy that you can point to that may seem to be effect less, but the biggest problem with the strategy for political change is that there seems to be this resilience against working on all approaches—an academic will only voice his/her opinion to a select crowd. A crowd that is of a particular social and education distinction and is not really reaching everyone. Even though we tout media as changing general perceptions of everyone here, its really not reaching everyone… and most definitely is not something that is being included in foreign country assessments in intelligence briefings. (though undoubtedly used in spinning policies arguments to the administrations preference). What is being used is the knowledge that is offered or interpreted by analysts in governmental agencies—their language skills in reading foreign media, correspondence, and yea even listening to phone conversations. Someone in that position who understands cultural complexities and most importantly the regional issues better than joe from Wichita Kansas, can really make a difference in how the information is relayed, interpreted and used. It's unlikely that one open minded individual will have a huge impact immediately, but if everyone thinks that their one voice isn't going to make a difference, then we’re left with nothing. It has to start with someone to grow into something further. In the 2000 presidential election only 51.3% of the eligible voters voted. There a whole lot of people that either don’t care yet or don’t have the means or time because they have basic necessities that they have to work for. A lot of people who can be moved or helped to have their voice heard—even if they’ve all probably said what’s my one vote going to do. I could obviously go on and on, especially since I haven’t gotten into (though you could see it coming)the favored grassroots ideology of getting rid of ignorance on a basic level across the board amongst people in the states to change public opinion from one dominated by the fear of the other and skewed interpretations of cultural and social orders by the early missionaries to something that’s at its very basic level informed and aware.
My point is that in all our discussions we’ve almost always heard one person fight for one way in lieu of the other or even to further and say that it’s the only way to achieve any resolution to dealing with misconceptions and poor government/legislative policies. Yea maybe academics alone can’t adequately cover all ground to generate an informed public opinion, but there are other prongs.. it stands to reason that the country founded on the three tiered, checks and balances Constitution could be best worked by actually following the system that its laid out in.
