Juan Cole had some observations on Wednesday about the deficiencies of American "public diplomacy", which would include both propaganda and education, in Arab countries:
You know, if you were an Arab intellectual in Cairo, Amman or even Baghdad, and you wanted to read a book that collected some central writings of Thomas Jefferson in Arabic, you almost certainly could not get hold of such a book. I repeat: The major classics of American thought either have not been translated into Arabic, or were published in tiny editions and are now impossible to find. I just checked. Bernard Mayo's Jefferson Himself appeared in Cairo in 1959 and 1960. Nobody now could find a copy, I am sure. I searched for the Federalist Papers in Arabic and got nothing. Abbas Mahmud al-`Aqqad's book on Benjamin Franklin was published in 1955, and appears to be the last word on the subject.
There is no good book distribution in the Arab world, no jobbers like Ingram or Baker & Taylor. Often bookstores publish a book, in a run of 500 copies, and if you want the book you have to go to that bookstore. I've tramped all over Cairo looking for obscure little bookstores that had put out a volume I wanted. A lot of the time, authoritarian governments keep books published in other Arab countries out. I can remember how shocked I was at how small and understocked the Arabic-language bookstores were in Tunis (the bourgeoisie could buy all the French books they liked).
For all the talk about encouraging democracy in the Middle East, publishing books in Arabic about the history of democracy in America seems to be an undertaking that would make sense.
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