EDITOR'S LETTER

Leading with Our Strong Suits

As I write this, the Taliban are being run to ground and are locked into an area of Afghanistan the size of New Jersey. The C.I.A. and the F.B.I., meanwhile—flush with bigger budgets and a greater public appreciation for whatever it is they should be doing but haven’t been—ramp up for a more nuanced and stressful future. Our troops will no doubt come home as the heroes they so rightly are. And then they should stay put.

Look, imagine this: An America whose borders have been constructed by outside powers. An America with foreign troops whose lifestyles violate the sacred tenets of our religions stationed on the most revered regions of our soil. An America in which people from another land try to replace our values with their own. It is what we ask of so many countries in the Middle East and what we would in no way countenance ourselves.

When the battle against al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden has been won, the real, long-term war will just be starting. And in settling our disagreements with so many powers in the Islamic world, guns may not be the only way to go. America cannot patrol the world stopping people from killing one another in blood feuds that stretch over the sands through the ages. Nor can it keep small cities of U.S. troops in unfriendly lands to protect our interests, and expect them to be welcomed as liberating do-gooders.

But the U.S. can and should develop a modernized and modified Marshall Plan—help rebuild nations and cities with few strings attached save disarmament and then couple that with a massive and prolonged public-relations campaign. Indeed, it may be time to look outside government and hand things over to industries that America has always excelled at: the advertising and movie businesses. If Madison Avenue can get us to switch from one vodka to a more expensive one with an almost identical taste, it can surely sell the Muslim world on the notion that the fabulous and sometimes foolish thing we call the American way of life doesn’t necessarily threaten their own.

And how about this: instead of turning to studio heads to churn out the sort of rah-rah agitprop released during World War II, the Bush administration should go right to Hollywood’s special-effects masters. Why not, as one friend of the magazine suggested, have them manipulate video images of bin Ladenmuch as the creators of The Sopranos massaged the video images of the late Nancy Marchand—in order to make counterfeit bin Laden videos (perhaps even posthumous ones) in which he would say things that would help sway a technically unsophisticated populace toward liking us, or at least not loathing us. Perhaps this digital bin Laden could be made to shake hands with Colin Powell, or do a guest spot on Friends, which could then be sent to A1 Jazeera for broadcast. That would win some hearts and minds.

GRAYDON CARTER