WASHINGTON, 18 September 2003 — People in Muslim nations have an increasingly low opinion of the United States, despite the Bush administration’s effort to burnish the US image after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, according to a General Accounting Office report.
The State Department’s attempts to win friends abroad through broadcasts, pamphlets, educational exchange programs and other measures lacked a comprehensive strategy, was understaffed and lacked people with sufficient language skills, GAO, the investigative and audit agency for Congress, said. The report released this month cited public opinion polls of US allies that showed favorable views of the United States had declined in recent years. The most negative views were found in the Muslim countries in the Middle East and Central Asia — countries the Bush administration wants to enlist in its war on terror.
The US-led invasion of Iraq worsened Muslim views of the United States, the report said, citing a Pew Research Center poll done in March. While the administration has boosted the budget for public diplomacy by 9 percent to about $1 billion and launched a high-profile effort to reach Muslim countries, the GAO said the State Department had not completed a plan to carry it out.
The report said the State Department did not have a system for measuring progress in its diplomacy goals, but instead relied on anecdotal evidence such as favorable news articles or the number of speeches given by ambassadors.
