Al-Qaeda and radical Islamists are winning the propaganda war against the United States, says a high-level Pentagon panel, which concluded that President George W Bush’s administration’s policies in the Middle East, its fundamental failure to understand the Muslim world and a lack of imagination in using new communications technologies are responsible.
The Bushies don’t want to understand the Muslim world. Rather they wish only to dictate terms to it. But their arrogance and blindness is backfiring, as those who were friends become become opponents and the US increasingly is without allies.