Desperate Housewives Winning Muslim Hearts and Minds?

The United States think it can win Arabs hearts and minds simply by managing a crude and vulgar propaganda channel - al-hurra - all the while dropping bombs and occupying Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan, supporting Arab dictatorships which oppress and kill their own people and subsidizing Israeli brutal military occupation against the Palestinians.

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The Wikileaks cables make it clear that the United States has no regard for its Arab client tyrants. The U.S. treats them with scorn and disregards their sentiments, and deservedly so. Puppets merit no respect.

But the United States must think that the Arab people are just as dump as the illiterate Saudi king it considers an "ally" if they'll be deluded by wanton American propaganda on T.V. all the while ignoring the actual reality in their region. Of course Arabs have not been amused and America's efforts have failed to improve its image because it is not about presentation of policy but about the actual policy which is destructive. Arabs are not going to be taken in by a U.S. official stating that America's policies are benign when they are evidently inimical to the well-being of Arabs and Muslims. At least some people in the U.S. government understand this: “To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate,” Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently wrote. Nice to see one smart individual.

And do not believe the lie that "they hate us for our freedom [sic] or way of life" it is about policy. Arabs like Americans:

Diplomats said they believed the allure of actors such as Eva Longoria, Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer meant commercial TV had a far greater impact than al-Hurra which, according to one report, has cost US taxpayers up to $500m (£316m).

"It's still all about the war of ideas here, and the American programming on MBC and Rotana [a channel part-owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation] is winning over ordinary Saudis in a way that al-Hurra and other US propaganda never could," two Saudi media executives told a US official in a meeting at a Jeddah branch of Starbucks. "Saudis are now very interested in the outside world and everybody wants to study in the US if they can. They are fascinated by US culture in a way they never were before," the May 2009 cable says.

The point here is that Arab and Muslim antipathy is not about culture or religion, Arabs like Americans just fine and enjoy American culture and many even aspire to live a similar life. It is about policy. The antipathy is rooted against America's policies in the region: support for Israeli occupation, corrupt and authoritarian Arab regimes, and America's own wars and occupation and the general plot of American imperial hubris in the region.

So it is no contradiction to like Desperate Housewives and still fiercely oppose America's policies in the region and thus have a negative image of "America" which is separate and distinct from the approval of America's culture and people and lifestyle.

And that means that Desperate Housewives will actually not win hearts and minds, because the two are misrelated. As long as policy remains as is America's disapproval rating will still be very high in the region no matter how much Eva Longoria Arabs consume.