Hi. Welcome to the blog for my IB English B class at Jur Hronec High School in Bratislava, Slovakia. Below you will find links to other websites and discussion questions. My students are required to comment on one of these postings every month and also respond to each other's comments. Feel free to add your two bits, but be aware that all comments are monitored before being posted.
Do you think “soft” diplomacy like this can work?How could you measure its success?If you were a musician, would such a gig appeal to you?What else can the US do to improve their image abroad?
I find the idea as a friendly gesture; however I don’t think it would be effective at a large scale. The thing with cultural events like these is that they only influence a small, tiny bit of the population and therefore, it is only effective on miniscule numbers of people. Nevertheless, over a certain period of time, these events could change the way how Pakistani citizens perceive the US. The concerts seemed to have been rather effective according to what the audience members said.
I just wonder why the majority of Pakistani people dislike the United States. They didn’t have any fights or wars against each other as far as I could remember. The only thing I could think of is their alliance after the 2001 attacks in the US. This alliance caused Pakistan to be perceived as hostile and enemy by the Taliban, which resulted in suicide bombings and assaults against the Pakistani people, but I still don’t quite understand why they would blame the US for something like this, it isn’t like the US wanted Pakistan to get attacked.
As I mentioned before, the cultural events by themselves are not enough in my opinion, if the goal of this whole idea is to strengthen the relationship between Pakistani and American people then the process would be very time consuming, I would suggest something more events to go with the concerts like for example: exhibitions of sports which are common for the US like baseball and football. This would be much more effective. Nevertheless the concerts are a good start.
Just as you said at the start, the concerts organized are effective on a limited amount of people. There is no point in arguing with this. It’s a fact. The problem lies in the fact that the people that attend there concerts are, with neglect able exceptions, people who have only little prejudice against America or are the people who feel the least hate towards Americans. As opposed to what you said, I doubt the effectiveness of these concerts because in the end no one really changes; the attendees of the concerts go home with perhaps just a little bit more love for the US, and the band goes back the US after a well performed publicity stunt.
This is what I was trying to get at. Looking at the event from a whole different perspective, one could say that the publicity gained from actually going to Pakistan and doing a live performance that is so controversial with local tradition and belief is what the band was seeking, that the label “act of bringing the two countries closer together” was only added additionally to attract the right attention, and that in even in retrospect the whole event bore almost no significance.
When a person from a third party country, such as me, looks at the whole crisis between Pakistan and America, he or she will, after a while, understand that that the situation is in fact at a very, very bad place. An overwhelmingly large portion of US citizen have unjustified prejudice towards Pakistan already from young ages and in turn get hated by Pakistani citizen for the military operations that US troops always seem to be carrying out in their land. As a final result of this, Pakistan is the country that is least friendly with the US, and the US will keep “fighting terrorism” and “establishing democracy” in Pakistan, where terrorists run exactly because of the weak cooperation with the US, who is hunting them down.
Overall, I think that the kinds of cultural events that you mentioned on such a scale are absolutely useless and have unrealistic aims. Unless something drastic is done, these two nations are bound to still be fighting in 1000 years.
I find the idea as a friendly gesture; however I don’t think it would be effective at a large scale. The thing with cultural events like these is that they only influence a small, tiny bit of the population and therefore, it is only effective on miniscule numbers of people. Nevertheless, over a certain period of time, these events could change the way how Pakistani citizens perceive the US. The concerts seemed to have been rather effective according to what the audience members said.
ReplyDeleteI just wonder why the majority of Pakistani people dislike the United States. They didn’t have any fights or wars against each other as far as I could remember. The only thing I could think of is their alliance after the 2001 attacks in the US. This alliance caused Pakistan to be perceived as hostile and enemy by the Taliban, which resulted in suicide bombings and assaults against the Pakistani people, but I still don’t quite understand why they would blame the US for something like this, it isn’t like the US wanted Pakistan to get attacked.
As I mentioned before, the cultural events by themselves are not enough in my opinion, if the goal of this whole idea is to strengthen the relationship between Pakistani and American people then the process would be very time consuming, I would suggest something more events to go with the concerts like for example: exhibitions of sports which are common for the US like baseball and football. This would be much more effective. Nevertheless the concerts are a good start.
Just as you said at the start, the concerts organized are effective on a limited amount of people. There is no point in arguing with this. It’s a fact. The problem lies in the fact that the people that attend there concerts are, with neglect able exceptions, people who have only little prejudice against America or are the people who feel the least hate towards Americans. As opposed to what you said, I doubt the effectiveness of these concerts because in the end no one really changes; the attendees of the concerts go home with perhaps just a little bit more love for the US, and the band goes back the US after a well performed publicity stunt.
ReplyDeleteThis is what I was trying to get at. Looking at the event from a whole different perspective, one could say that the publicity gained from actually going to Pakistan and doing a live performance that is so controversial with local tradition and belief is what the band was seeking, that the label “act of bringing the two countries closer together” was only added additionally to attract the right attention, and that in even in retrospect the whole event bore almost no significance.
When a person from a third party country, such as me, looks at the whole crisis between Pakistan and America, he or she will, after a while, understand that that the situation is in fact at a very, very bad place. An overwhelmingly large portion of US citizen have unjustified prejudice towards Pakistan already from young ages and in turn get hated by Pakistani citizen for the military operations that US troops always seem to be carrying out in their land. As a final result of this, Pakistan is the country that is least friendly with the US, and the US will keep “fighting terrorism” and “establishing democracy” in Pakistan, where terrorists run exactly because of the weak cooperation with the US, who is hunting them down.
Overall, I think that the kinds of cultural events that you mentioned on such a scale are absolutely useless and have unrealistic aims. Unless something drastic is done, these two nations are bound to still be fighting in 1000 years.