The United States is responding to negative perceptions of the U.S. in the Middle East through a variety of public diplomacy initiatives, Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a September 17 interview with NBC News. As examples, he cited new Arabic radio and television broadcasting as well as expanded exchange programs for Arab journalists and students.

Powell said that free elections in Afghanistan and Iraq will help people see that the U.S. represents "freedom and reconciliation," and that attitudes toward the United States will change.

Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are often combined in the public mind, Powell said, and constitute a chief reason for negative views of the United States.

"People are not happy with the situation in Iraq and we have to get this insurgency under control," according to Powell. "We have to show the people of the world that Iraq is going to be a democracy standing on its own two feet and the United States can leave."

Powell observed that the U.S. helped liberate some 55 million Muslim people in Afghanistan and Iraq who were "living under the worst sorts of conditions." The U.S. also led coalitions that preserved Muslim identity in Kosovo and liberated Kuwait, Powell said.

"My own view is that these negative attitudes are driven more by policy disagreements than an inherent dislike or hatred of America or Americans," Powell commented. "I think we're still respected throughout the world and there's still a strong residual base that we can get back to once we get past these policy problems."

Powell criticized some Arab media, particularly al Jazeera, for unfair and distorted coverage. "They go after these kinds of images and they overplay them," he said. "To some extent, they almost drift into -- especially al-Jazeera -- beyond news gathering and reporting into complete propaganda."

Department of State
Interview on NBC Nightly News with Fred Francis
Secretary Colin L. Powell
Washington, DC
September 17, 2004

MR. FRANCIS: Mr. Secretary, a couple of weeks ago I was in Egypt. I hadn't been there in quite some time. I walked the streets, talked to a lot of people. In the one country that you would think in the Middle East where we still had some currency, I found none. And that's what prompts me asking you for this: American public diplomacy seems to be going nowhere. Would you agree or disagree with that?

SECRETARY POWELL: We have a problem. We have a problem with attitudes in the Arab world and attitudes in the Muslim world. But it is not just a problem with public diplomacy in the form of just, you know, how we go about sending our message out, but we're having difficulty with our message right now. People are not happy with the situation in Iraq and we have to get this insurgency under control and we have to show the people of the world that Iraq is going to be a democracy standing on its own two feet and the United States can leave.

We also have difficulty because people think that more should be happening with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian track. It's a very difficult account. Those two issues, and just those two combined, I think, gives us the major public diplomacy challenge that we have.

We are responding in a number of ways. We are responding by setting up radio stations and television stations, by bringing more and more Arab journalists to the United States for training, by having micro-scholarships for students to learn the English language and learn more about America.

My own view is that these negative attitudes are driven more by policy disagreements than an inherent dislike or hatred of America or Americans. I think we're still respected throughout the world and there's still a strong residual base that we can get back to once we get past these policy problems.

MR. FRANCIS: See, I didn't find that. I found that it was, although it hasn't bled over to dislike for Americans --

SECRETARY POWELL: Exactly.

MR. FRANCIS: -- but the American Government, and not just our government, i.e., Iraq right now is perhaps the -- let me start by asking you this. Basically broken the back of al-Qaida, basically freed -- what is it? -- 35 million people in Iraq, yet Iraq seems to be the biggest recruiting tool. Even though we've broken the back of al-Qaida, it seems to be the biggest recruiting effort for the jihadists in the world. And because of that, people are just flooding into there and feeding al-Jazeera and feeding al-Arabiya and feeding the other networks. It's almost as if we've given up, I guess is the -- have we given up?

SECRETARY POWELL: Of course not. We haven't given up. Al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya are problems. It's not just a matter of feeding them. They go after it. They go after these kinds of images and they overplay them and, to some extent, they almost drift into -- especially al-Jazeera -- beyond news gathering and reporting but into complete propaganda. They whip up the masses and we have a problem with them. That's why we are also using other means of communicating, the radio station that we put up, and that has gotten more and more support and more people are listening to it.

And we are working on this in every way that we can. You know, the fact of the matter is we liberated, between Afghanistan and Iraq, some 55 million Muslims who were living under the worst sorts of conditions. We did the same thing in Kosovo, for that matter, preserving Muslim identity in Kosovo. We did the same thing, frankly, when we liberated Kuwait some years ago.

But there is this serious anti-American feeling because of these actions in Iraq, and in the West Bank and Gaza, that we haven't done enough. I don't know that terrorists are swarming into Iraq. Yes, some have come in. The problem in Iraq is essentially an indigenous insurgency that is self-generating. But look who these people are. These are people who want to take Iraq back into the past to the days of Saddam Hussein.

MR. FRANCIS: Perhaps not swarming, but it's become a cause with jihadists all over the world.

SECRETARY POWELL: Right. And it --

MR. FRANCIS: They can't get here, they can't get to the United States, but they can fight the Americans in Iraq.

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah, look, I don't see this. What I see is a self-generating insurgency that is fueled mostly by former regime elements. Yes, Zawahiri is there and he's drawing in some terrorists. But it's not as if every terrorist in the world is heading there. A lot of them are going elsewhere. It is a worldwide problem for the whole civilized world.

I also believe firmly that if this insurgency is put down, and it will be put down in due course, and if Iraq security forces are shown to be taking care of the security of their own people, and the government gets on top of this and then we have free elections, the United States will disengage, just as we have so many other times in our past when we help a nation up on its feet and then step back. Free elections in Afghanistan, free elections in Iraq, it seems to me, will take a lot of the sting out of this as people realize we're not doing this for our own purposes, we're doing this to help Muslims.

MR. FRANCIS: But getting the message out, we could buy al-Arabiya, we could buy an al-Jazeera. We're not even trying to compete with their message. We're not even trying to compete with that Islamic extremist message.

SECRETARY POWELL: I don't agree with you. We are. Just, as I mentioned, we have been --

MR. FRANCIS: The radio station?

SECRETARY POWELL: The radio station, television station. I spend a great deal of time speaking to -- on al-Arabiya. I was on al-Arabiya earlier this week. My people are on al-Jazeera. We are using those channels to communicate.

But certainly al-Jazeera can't have any claim to being a fair, balanced television station. It does everything it can to whip up emotion and to take the worst images possible and to use those to penetrate the Muslim world with them.

MR. FRANCIS: I started by asking -- I said you've broken the back of al-Qaida. I've talked to several intelligence people, some retired recently and some currently, who actually do believe, as one of them said when he was leaving, "At least I'm leaving knowing that guy's in a deep hole and can't do that to us again," meaning 9/11.

Would you agree with that?

SECRETARY POWELL: That's one of these little anecdotal suggestions by one individual. Yes, we have dealt a heavy blow against al-Qaida. Many of their top leaders have been eliminated. Usama bin Laden cannot stick his head out of the hole. But I think it would be unwise to think that there are not elements of al-Qaida around that still wish us ill and that could still strike us. But, fortunately, they haven't been able to do so since 9/11. It's been three years, almost, that we have gone, more than three years now, that we've gone without that kind of an attack.

So we have to remain vigilant. We have to assume that there are people out there belonging to al-Qaida who would attack us if they could. And we are going to go after them. We're going to go after them with police efforts, with other law enforcement efforts, with intelligence efforts, military action as appropriate, working with our friends and allies.

There really is a grand coalition that is coming together to deal with terrorism. The Russians faced it a couple weeks ago. The Spanish faced it on their 3/11 when trains were blown up. Other nations have faced it. Indonesia has seen it again. And everybody is saying this must stop.

MR. FRANCIS: Finally, Mr. Secretary, the command-and-control, though. Usama bin Laden, Zawahiri, they don't really have command-and-control of a base, this operational force that they once had. Would you agree with that?

SECRETARY POWELL: I think their control is much less than it was in the past because they have taken such losses. I mean, lieutenant after lieutenant after lieutenant has been eliminated. They know how much we are watching everything that's going on and how hard we are looking for them, so they can't have the same kind of control that they had when they were running free in Afghanistan.

MR. FRANCIS: Yeah.

SECRETARY POWELL: I mean, all the people who are critical of our efforts, do they really think that the Afghan people were better off when the Taliban was in charge and al-Qaida had hijacked a country? The people who are critical of our efforts, shouldn't they take note of the fact that 3 million Afghan refugees have returned from the camps in Iran and in Pakistan to build new lives in Afghanistan? Houses are going up. Security is being improved. And yet these former regime elements of the Taliban regime try to strike against this government.

And I think that, over time, I hope the people of the world, particularly people in the Muslim world, will measure this in the proper way and say, look, Mr. Karzai -- President Karzai -- in Afghanistan, and Prime Minister Allawi in Iraq, what are you trying to do? Suppress their people? Oppress their people? No, they're trying to have free elections so that people have the ability to judge who should be their leaders. And to use the wealth of the countries, if it's oil wealth in the case of Iraq and the wealth and the talents of the people in Afghanistan, to use these for proper things, for building up their societies, not for invading other countries, not for developing weapons of a conventional nature or weapons of mass destruction to threaten themselves or threaten their neighbors.

And I hope that it's such a powerful message, such a powerful message of freedom and reconciliation, that when the work has been done in Afghanistan and Iraq and people see the United States did not go in there for oil or to dominate anyone, and we pull back, the attitudes that now exist around the world with respect to the United States will change.

But I still believe there is that base out there of respect and admiration for the United States that, at the moment, has superimposed on it and holding it down the problems that you have mentioned in Iraq and elsewhere.

But I'll tell you what, Fred. There are still a lot of people who are trying to get visas to come to this country. There are a lot of people who want to get satellite dishes and they're putting those satellite dishes up not just to listen to al-Jazeera or to watch al-Jazeera. They're putting them up to watch and listen to what's happening in the United States. They pay as much attention to the other parts of our society as they do to whatever the military might be doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. And so I think all of that -- are strengths that we can use and will be using in the months and years ahead.

MR. FRANCIS: Thank you.