Meehan's message on extremism

Scot Lehigh - The Boston Globe: "REPRESENTATIVE Martin Meehan recently returned from a 10-day fact-finding trip to the Middle East -- and the message he brings back is sobering.

Meehan, who met with political and government leaders from Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, and Israel as well as US officials there, says his take-away impression is that the United States needs to do much more to stop the spread of radical Islam.

''We are not rising to meet the long-term challenges we face in the region," Meehan says. ''We need an approach that uses every tool we have. The military is part of it, but it also has to be political, diplomatic, economic, and educational."

This is hardly the first venture into foreign policy for Meehan, the ranking Democrat on the House subcommittee on terrorism, unconventional threats, and capabilities.

Earlier this year, after his second trip to Iraq, Meehan proposed a 12- to 18-month phase-down of US troops there, saying that the perception of an open-ended US occupation was helping fuel the insurgency. His idea sparked some discussion, though the Bush administration's public posture remains that US troops will stay in Iraq as long as it takes.

''If the Democrats could unite behind a proposal like that, I think we'd have a stronger rationale for opposing the president's policy in Iraq," Meehan says.

Now the Fifth District congressman has a new policy paper on nonmilitary measures the United States should undertake in the region. In it, he writes that the Iraq war and the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict have fueled a surge of anti-American animus, which provides fertile ground for Islamic extremism.

The Bush administration has not done nearly enough to counter that or to advance our values and our image in the region, the Lowell Democrat says.

''We talk a good talk about freedom, but we really aren't doing what's necessary to make it work," he says. ''We have the rhetoric, but not the resources."

The United States, which has so far spent $200 billion in Iraq, each year devotes only $500 million to diplomacy and only $25 million to outreach programs in the Middle East, the congressman says. In his proposal, Meehan underscores the finding of an April report by the Government Accountability Office that the US government ''does not yet have a public diplomacy communications strategy."

''Our enemies seek to exploit ideas that have unfortunately gained in resonance: suspicion of the West, fear of modernity, hatred of the United States, and persistent anti-Semitism," he writes.

To combat that poisonous mix, US strategy must engage much more vigorously in public diplomacy, says Meehan. That means mounting a ''sustained large-scale cross-cultural conversation," one that should include a reinvigorated United States Information Agency, a sixfold increase in Arabic speakers (from about 50 to 300) in the State Department, US cultural centers at our embassies, public information programming for Arab cable channels, and cultural exchanges.

The difficult question , of course, is how the United States should go about trying to alter attitudes in a region where problems such as the second-class status of women are religiously justified. One of Meehan's recommendations: Focus on reforming educational systems that by default often leave families relying on madrassas, the religious schools that in some instances indoctrinate young people in radical Islam. The problem is not just the madrassas but ''the absence of schools altogether or schools that produce students who are neither skilled nor prepared for the modern workplace," he writes.

The United States, Meehan adds, should commit $5 billion to $10 billion annually to increase ''the availability of effective public education," education that should stress science and math and that would include girls.

The battle against extremism won't be won until Middle Eastern economies hold real opportunities for their people, the congressman says.

To that end, Meehan says, the region needs a central development bank like the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development -- started in 1991 to promote private enterprise in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe -- to spark development in the Arab world.

There's no quick fix, the congressman says. Instead, we face a long struggle, but it's one we must engage. Before Sept. 11, he says, we failed to comprehend the threat we faced from radical Islam.

''In the war on terror, we can't afford another failure by doing too little in the struggle against violent extremism," he concludes. ''This is a critical moment in history, and it demands a comprehensive strategy to deal with the threat of radical Islam.""