War is peace!

That manipulation is tremendously successful in a lot of cases, right?

Rampton: It is successful in advertising. But the problem Charlotte Beers was facing when she did her campaign was that she was trying to communicate to an audience that was much more hostile and likely to view with suspicion everything she was trying to communicate.

In the book, we quote Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News. His point is that the United States has been doing propaganda in Arab and Muslim countries for a long time, the people there are used to it, and the skepticism they feel is from decades of history. The way he put it is that the United States lost the propaganda war a long time ago. They could have the prophet Mohammed doing their public relations, and it wouldn't help.

John Stauber: Also, there's essentially two types of propaganda: advertising and public relations. The difference is that advertising is usually perceptible and in your face. If you spend enough money on it and it's clever enough and you utilize effects and thrills, you might be able to sell a product.

Advertising can work well for branding because it's so pervasive. But it's not subtle. I think the idea that an advertising approach -- and Charlotte Beers was a product of Madison Avenue -- to "brand" America and change the minds of Muslims about American policies was absolutely the wrong way to go.

There's this split in the propaganda industry and between the advertising and the P.R. people. The split came about because of the idea that the best approach to manipulating public opinion in Muslim countries was to turn to advertising.

Advertising is blatant manipulation. If there were ads on our TV trying to convince us that Osama bin Laden's ideology and religion were really wonderful, it would be just as ridiculous as these ads Charlotte Beers was trying to run in Muslim countries.

If there were a P.R. plan that didn't insult the intelligence of the audience and that was more nuanced, could it change public opinion of the U.S. in Arab and Muslim countries?

Stauber: Overall, the idea that people who are deeply wounded and offended by their personal perception of U.S. policy and the role of it in their lives -- the idea that those people can be completely turned around with pop music, advertising and third-party experts ... just shows the hubris of the U.S. governmental approach to public opinion outside the United States.

Rampton: If they had had more dialogue, instead of one-way attempts at communication, then they'd have had more success. But even there, the main thing that undermines the propaganda campaign has been the Bush administration's push to war.

John and I wrote -- in our first book together, titled "Toxic Sludge Is Good for You" -- a passage about a P.R. campaign to sell people on the idea that "good" sludge is a good fertilizer. Part of that campaign involved trying to persuade people to live next door to places where "good" sludge was being used as fertilizer, like on the farm next to them.

They tried to persuade them that it was harmless to their health ... and that it didn't even smell bad. [laughs] We got a letter from a woman who said: "They tell us there's no danger, but they also tell us there's no smell. And every day when I walk outside my door I can smell this stuff, so how am I supposed to believe it when they say there's no danger, when they won't even admit there's a smell?"

The evidence of people's experience is a powerful thing in itself. And the experience of people in Muslim and Arab countries is as powerful a factor -- probably more powerful a factor -- in shaping their opinion of the United States than anything we can say by way of propaganda.

Why weren't people in the Arab world pleased with the United States for the removal of Saddam Hussein from Iraq?

Rampton: As long as there's a contradiction between our stated goals for the region, which is that we support democracy and good things for the people in the region, and our actions, which consist of allying ourselves with repressive regimes so we can get their oil, public opinion is always going to be in a downward spiral.

Stauber: With Saddam Hussein, for decades the United States essentially looked the other way. People who lived in the Middle East, people who have suffered under Saddam Hussein, understood very well that as long as he was serving the interests of the U.S., he was our friend and ally. His great crime in the eyes of the Bush administration wasn't gassing his own people, it was appropriating oil that belonged to the ruling family of Kuwait.

There's a deep and understandable cynicism, and it's not just a feeling that, 'Hey, we're Arabs, we're Muslims, we don't get any respect from the United States.' It's a long, sordid history of U.S. support for horribly repressive regimes. Saddam Hussein was a wonderful ally to the U.S., until he misunderstood how far he could go.

So it isn't possible for the U.S. to strike a balance in regard to hot-button issues? On one side, for example, you'd have the support the U.S. gave to Muslims in Kosovo, and on the other, the situation in Palestine and the U.S. backing of Israel?

Stauber: I don't think any of us really think that way. Just look at the U.S. response to France over this whole affair. I don't see people boycotting Canadian maple syrup. But the Canadians very loudly kept out of this war and were proud not to support the U.S. in it. But France -- there's something about France! [laughs]

There's this emotional, anti-France attitude in the U.S. that really was set off by France's stand on this whole situation. Rational analysis may be a factor, but it's based on a gut feeling about how we're treated.

Rampton: There's definitely an emotional component, but also, there's a feeling in Arab nations and Muslim nations that the United States is supporting autocratic regimes ranging from Saudi Arabia to Morocco and giving nothing but lip service to democracy. And of course, then there's huge resentment over Israel. And I think even if we do the right thing in a few places like Bosnia, it's not going to outweigh the resentment they feel about the rest of things.

If you want to move the dial of public opinion away from that resentment, it's only through a policy that's consistently true to the principles that we say we stand for: democracy and respect for human rights. And that has not, thus far, been the policy of our government.

What do you say to other Americans who hate the idea that the United States is hated in some parts of the world? Isn't it rational to want the U.S. to engage in some P.R. to help remedy that hatred, even if it is a shallow approach, since there is anti-American propaganda flowing the other way?

Rampton: There are two things happening right now, and one is the result of the U.S. policy that John and I have been focusing on. The other thing is the fact that for a variety of reasons, the United States has become the world's sole standing superpower.

If you ever played the game of Risk you know that sooner or later one person would become more powerful than everyone else, and that every other player would start to worry about that one who was the most powerful on the board. And it didn't have to do with whether we liked them or not. It had to do with the fact that the most powerful one on the board was the one we were most afraid of.

That's part of the dilemma for the United States. We have become a superpower that at least imagines itself being capable of dominating the rest of the world without listening.

Yes, we definitely need a strategy for communicating with the rest of the world that changes the way they think about us. But a big part of that communication strategy has to involve changing the way we think about the rest of the world, and demonstrating our willingness to hear what they have to say and give them our attention.

One of the things that I found very striking after Sept. 11 was that this mood began to emerge in the United States that you could not say anything critical about U.S. foreign policy. You couldn't try to list the reasons why this hatred exists toward the United States, without someone immediately piping up to say, "We're so traumatized right now, it's very insensitive of you even to bring that up. We can't even discuss that now because the pain is just too intense."

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