TELL U.S. STORY, OPENLY

TELL U.S. STORY, OPENLY
Los Angeles Times: The United States has a good story about democracy, free markets, individual rights. U.S. embassies should be telling it loudly abroad, their voices amplified by U.S.-financed broadcasting operations like Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.
The way not to tell it is by surreptitiously putting foreign journalists on the CIA or the Defense Department payroll. That taints the information and imperils reputations and lives when the payoffs become known, as they eventually do. Yet the Pentagon, for the second time in a little over a year, is reported to be debating secret propaganda operations in friendly or neutral nations.
In November 2001, the Defense Department established the Office of Strategic Influence. It supposedly would concentrate on influencing foreign media to counteract lies spread by hostile governments and individuals on outlets like Al Jazeera, the newly powerful Middle Eastern radio and television operation favored by Osama bin Laden for his statements.
Although Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the Pentagon itself would not lie, other officers said the new office also proposed spreading false information to foreign journalists as a means of furthering the U.S. war on terrorism. (The CIA agreed in 1977 not to hire U.S. reporters to spy or disguise its operatives as reporters.) The office shut down in February after waves of criticism. Clearing out the desks seems not to have erased the idea.
'Disinformation'
Of course, wartime "disinformation" has a long history, most notably the successful attempt to convince Nazi Germany that the D-Day invasion of Europe would start somewhere other than Normandy. But keeping a tight lid on military operations or feinting about where they will occur is a far cry from trying in peacetime to psychologically influence allies and hide the government's role. Even worse is taking the next step beyond clandestinely paying foreign journalists to favor the United States: planting outright lies. In the age of global information, 24-hour newscasts and the Internet, false stories quickly boomerang to their point of origin.
The United States should tell its story. When the United States Information Agency was independent, it fought to keep libraries and information centers open, spreading its message far and wide. The State Department, always uncomfortable with that independence and sometimes preferring not to upset host countries, absorbed the USIA three years ago. Financing libraries overseas, even schools, is fine. Just identify them as U.S. creations. Tell the American story, the good and the bad, and depend on the truth to be persuasive.
JAMAICA REMEDY
Toronto Globe and Mail: Bringing back the noose in Jamaica, as Prime Minister P.J. Patterson plans to do, would offer an illusory comfort to a frightened, angry public. It would not make the Caribbean island's streets any safer. Fewer than one-third of the astounding 1,139 killings last year in Jamaica (pop. 2.6 million) have been solved. The problem is not the severity of punishment but the lack of certainty that murder will be punished. In fact, the odds are it won't be punished. Not, at least, by the state.
Of those 1,139 killings, 368 were reprisals. Street "justice" is the rule, not the exception. At least 148 people were killed by police last year, many of them in what appeared to be extrajudicial executions, according to Amnesty International. Jamaica should begin by rebuilding the rule of law. That is hard work. In Kingston, the capital, inner-city neighborhoods have become "garrisons" led by paramilitary gangs whose leaders dispense favors. These gangs have been linked to the country's two main political parties. Attempts to root out corruption and impose law will be fought by vested interests at all costs.
Hard work
If Jamaica wants a society that respects the rule of law, it has to ensure its police are both law-abiding and effective. That is more hard work. And witnesses need to know they will be protected. Last month a pregnant woman and her mother were murdered; it is believed they were killed for giving a tip to police. It is easy to sympathize with the Jamaican people's wish to live in safety. Their island has 20 times as many murders in a year as Toronto, which has roughly the same number of people.
The Daily Gleaner newspaper runs a daily murder update on its front page. On a typical day, Kingston police wear helmets, soldiers carry M-16 rifles and a 13-year-old girl is shot dead at a child's birthday party. Capital punishment does not reduce violence. In Canada, for instance, abolition in 1976 was followed by a decline in the average murder rate from 3.09 per 100,000 in 1975 to 1.80 today. Young people need hope and education, and some stability in their family life, in a country where few couples are married when they have children and where mothers, fathers or both may leave children behind for days or even years as they seek work. All this means more hard work, in a poor country with a heavy debt load. The proper answer to violence is not to apply the moral standards of the killers. The real task is to build a functioning justice system.