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In a victory for those who recognize the costs of yielding the ideological battlespace to America’s enemies, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Agencies chose to fully restore the Bush Administration’s planned cuts in several areas of government-sponsored international broadcasting that might prove decisive in confronting our Islamofascist enemies and their enablers.   Chairwoman Nita Lowey and her ranking Republican colleague, Frank Wolf, are to be commended for preventing the dismantlement of vital infrastructure with respect to the War of Ideas.

As Center for Security Policy President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., warned in his column for the Washington Times on Tuesday, the Administration’s planned cuts would have had the cumulative effect of writing-off more than 18 million listeners each week around the world (at a "savings" of merely $26 million, no less).   "Who could possibly choose voluntarily to eliminate such an audience," Mr. Gaffney asked, "much of which is in places critical to the future course of this war?"

Despite staving off such an egregious example of unilateral ideological disarmament, this latest episode comes on the heels of years of earlier, similarly ill-advised judgments with respect to international broadcasting.   Among other things, these have: placed greater priority on building audience share in the Mideast by substituting pop music for much of the news and information programming so vital to counter-ideological struggles; dismantled the short-wave broadcasting systems that remain critical to reaching some critical audiences; made taboo certain topics – such as the prospects for and necessity of the overthrow of Iran’s regime; and permitted our enemies in Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran to use U.S.-broadcasting arms like the Arabic-language Al Hurra television network as a propaganda platform.

Al Hurra has been particularly problematic.   Thankfully, the Subcommittee also saw fit to withhold funding from the network as a result of the disastrous decisions made by its news director, Larry Register.   Such a step will undoubtedly bring formidable and justified pressure to bear on the Broadcasting Board of Governors – which oversees Al Hurra – to fire Register.

Congresspersons Lowey and Wolf laid down significant markers that evoke the importance of strengthening the effectiveness and impact of those instruments of soft power particularly relevant to challenging, undermining and, with luck, defeating a virulent totalitarian ideology.   It is now incumbent upon their Senate counterparts to reconstitute America’s ability to disseminate its message of freedom throughout the world.  

Center for Security Policy

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