A panel of Arabist appeasers, led by a crony of James Baker (who was a featured speaker at the lunatic Arab think tank, the Zayed Institute for Coordination and Followup) has discovered that all we have to do to win the love and respect of the Arab world is give them more money. A lot more money: U.S. Must Counteract Image in Muslim World, Panel Says.

Mr. Djerejian, director of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, said he tried to pick a bipartisan cross-section for members of the panel. Among them are Shibley Telhami, a scholar at the University of Maryland, and John Zogby, an expert on public opinion in the Arab world.

The group’s major recommendations, besides creating a new White House director of public diplomacy, were to build libraries and information centers in the Muslim world, translate more Western books into Arabic, increase scholarships and visiting fellowships, upgrade the American Internet presence, and train more Arabists, Arab speakers and public relations specialists.

Oh, and one more thing. In addition to the money, and letting lots more students from Arab countries enter the US, it would probably help if the US stopped supporting Israel and permitted the Arab world to push the Jews into the sea. Of course, they can’t come right out and say that, though.

The Bush administration, for example, started a program called “shared values” last year, a series of television commercials showing that Muslims in the United States lead lives of dignity and equal rights. The advertisements were suspended after several Arab countries refused to show them.

Many in the administration were privately critical of the commercials, agreeing with Arab and Muslim spokesmen who said they were irrelevant to Muslim concerns about American policies toward Iraq and Israel.

The advisory panel said that it recognized that American policies might well be the root of the problem…