What does it mean when a Pashtun throws down his cap? Let’s ask Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s point man for ‘Af-Pak.’ Not only did he get a mouthful from Hamid Karzai in Kabul but watched the enraged president “whip off his distinctive karakul sheepskin hat and slam it onto the table where the two men were having dinner, a day after the disputed August 20 election,” according to The Sunday Times. “For an Afghan man to do that,” the paper quoted a local, “it’s a big gesture. It’s like throwing down the gauntlet.”
Reining in Richard Holbrooke and others in the State Department to cool it may well have been the cause celebre for Admiral Mike Mullen’s widely publicised article in an official military journal recently. As the highest-ranking officer in the US military, Mullen was perhaps inspired by President Obama’s Glasnost of opening up to the Pakistanis convincing them that “the US is their friend.” Normally ‘International Relations 101′ is the realm of diplomacy. Hillary Clinton rather than Mike Mullen should have compiled a handbook on how to treat others with respect. Foggy Bottom rather than Pentagon should have been the recipient of this global wisdom.
A former State Department official James Glassman in his September 1 column for Foreign Policy titled “It’s Not About Us” snottily dismisses Mullen’s rules of engagement with Muslim nations. “For the war-of-ideas part of public diplomacy, the constant admonition to US policymakers should be that it’s not about us. Bite your tongue when you say ‘we’… The way to counter that narrative is not to protest that the United States has clean hands and that if you really knew us you would love us — but to change the subject entirely. The US is the scapegoat, the animal on which all cares and hatreds are loaded. We only contribute to that way of thinking when we defend ourselves, or talk about ourselves at all.”
Apart from scolding Mullen for taking the blame (for US’s bad behaviour) Glassman reviles “Miss Congeniality” Judith McHale who succeeded him as the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs in the Obama administration. Heading for Pakistan to befriend the media there, McHale recently got snubbed by ace investigative journalist Ansar Abbasi as salaciously reported by the New York Times. Glassman gloats that McHale’s and Mullen’s efforts are futile because “Pakistanis don’t like the United States… no matter how many bridge-building meetings we have with them.” The thrust of the article is to also pick apart Abbasi and debunk his views vis-a-vis the US. “This is their struggle, just as the American Revolution and the Civil War were ours. And what does Ansar Abbasi have to do with such a narrative? Nothing at all. Which is why he is exactly the kind of person not worth talking to.”
While Mullen advocates listening to other voices, Glassman’s article says just the opposite as reflected in his impolitic remarks against Ansar Abbasi. Such hubris only fuels the fires of hate.
Now for some good news: Obama’s Glasnost has finally reached the American embassy in Islamabad. Officials manning the mission have for the first time attempted to bring the national media on board. It doesn’t pay to jettison the Pakistani media is the lesson they have learnt rather belatedly. In the past, the American officials appeared concentrating all their time, energies and charm on politicians and some handpicked editors and media persons known to favour the US. They made the rest of the press, especially those openly critical of American foreign policy, to seem invisible. Frequently at social gatherings, the uppity American diplomats showed open disdain by keeping the hacks at arms length.
It badly backfired.
