Arabs don't believe Bush, What a surprise

The New York Times has a piece by Michael Slackman that says that Muslims in the Middle East are very likely to believe that 9/11 was part of a program by Israel or the United States to build support for anti-Muslim activity -- a program that led to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The first thing to say is that there is a certain credibility to the story. I believe that the Bush administration used charges that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction and was meeting with Al Qaeda to justify the invasion of Iraq, at a time that the senior members of the administration should have and probably did know those charges were unsubstantiated and probably false. At the very least the U.S. government refused to accept the declaration of war from the Japanese Ambassador until after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and there is a certain credibility in the story that the Roosevelt administration did not act on prior information because it needed an overt attack to justify entering the war on the side of the allies. The explosion on the Battleship Maine was used as a reason to go to war with Spain and as far as I know it is still not known if it was in any way the result of sabotage. The Bush administration has bugged people illegally (as the Nixon administration did the Democratic National headquarters) and seems to have been bugging the current government of Iraq (our allies) as it did the delegations of our allies to the negotiations on the founding of the United Nations, in all probability lying about all that bugging to cover it up. While I do not think it is credible that the Bush administration nor the Israelis would crash airplanes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon for propaganda, I can see how others might reasonably give credence to the story.

The story apparently has passed from person to person in the Arab world much like an urban legend. People there, as here, often do not take the time and effort to validate information that they receive, and in this case would have no way to do so. They make judgments on the basis of the trust that they have in the source, the credibility of the story being told (internal consistency and consistency with other information that they have), and the emotional appeal of the story. The story attributing 9/11 to a U.S. and/or Israeli conspiracy has lots of the hallmarks of something that would be widely and rapidly spread by the "urban legend" processes. It is quite memorable, and likely to be told and retold, and was likely to be brought up in conversation often in the aftermath of the shock felt around the world by the images of the falling towers. Moreover, it would appear consistent with the invasion of a people on false charges, the mistreatment and torture of Muslims in Abu Grheib, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian villages by the Israelis, etc.

Of course, in contrast to the urban legend, in this case the man in the Arab street has to choose between two conflicting stories -- the U.S.-Israel conspiracy story from his friends and acquaintances and the Al Qaeda conspiracy story told by the U.S. government and the government controlled media available in his Arab country. Once Radio Free Europe and other U.S. government media had and deserved the trust of their audience. The Bush administration has both undercut those programs and in its Public Diplomacy initiative has cast doubt on that the purpose is dissemination of information rather than propaganda. Moreover, people tend to find their friends and acquaintances worthy of trust, and in the Arab world have learned to distrucst the official media.

The U.S.-Israel conspiracy story also differs from urban legends in that it may well have been spread deliberately by networks of anti-American and anti-Israeli organizations in a campaign of disinformation. These network sources might have been considered quite credible by the individuals with whom they planted the story and who began the chains of distribution of the story.

I recently read "Witchcraft, Weather and Economic Growth in Renaissance Europe" by Emily Oster. She shows a strong correlation between bad weather in Europe and the burning of witches. More witches were burned when the weather turned bad long enough to reduce crop yields. She infers that the social and economic trauma caused by the crop losses led people to accept stories of malevolent, magical behavior that they would not otherwise accept. There are similar theories that the pandemics of the middle ages spawned superstitious behavior on a very large scale, including pograms against the Jews and other groups chosen as scapegoats.

Thus it seems reasonable to me that the 9/11 story circulated and gained believers in part because of the difficult and worsening economic and social conditions experienced by so many Arabs. It is no wonder that they might seek scapegoats, and indeed powerful outside influences with malevolent intensions.

If this analysis is reasonable, it suggests a multipronged strategy to overcome the myth:

• First, trust in the communications from the United States must be reestablished, both for that from the Government and from private sector media. Advertising can help, as can sweeping clean the offending adminstration with "new brooms", but much more important is being trustworthy.
• We may encourage our allied governments in the Middle East to work harder to reestablish trust from their own people both in their official pronouncements and in the state controlled media.
  
• It may be helpful to desseminate the counterstory to the myth via networks in the Arab world who are trusted by Arabs and who believe our story, serving as a counterbalance to the disinformation of our adversaries.
• We can seek to combat the anti-American and anti-Israeli networks spreading disinformation, as the Bush administration and its allies have been doing (including by denying them funds).
• We can also seek to ameliorate the desperate conditions in which the Arabs too often live, conditions which encourage them to seek scapegoats and to disseminate and believe conspiracy stories.
• We can, over the very long term, promote the development of new institutions in developing nations that distribute reliable information, including a free press, a publishing industry, free mass media, libraries, etc.
  
• We can also promote education which will help wean people from the traditional institutions disseminating superstitions as often as facts, substituting these more modern institutions for the dissemination of high quality information.