It is not just the Obama administration but the American media too that must take note of the observations made by Adm Mike Mullen on US policies towards the Muslim world. In an article he wrote for a military journal, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said America must ‘worry a lot less about how to communicate [its] actions and much more about what [its] actions communicate’.

Declaring that American behaviour was often perceived as arrogant, uncaring and insulting, Adm Mullen pleaded for building a relationship of trust with the Muslim world and listening rather than ‘telling our story’. His article in Joint Force Quarterly ended by pleading for understanding the Muslim world’s ‘culture, needs and hopes’ for countering extremist propaganda. ‘Let our actions,’ he said, ‘speak for themselves.’

The admiral’s advice should be seen against the harsh reality of the Bush administration’s record vis-à-vis the Muslim world. America invaded Iraq in 2003 even though the Hans Blix commission’s findings to the UN declared categorically that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein was, of course, overthrown and executed, but the resistance to American occupation and counter-insurgency operations by the US-led coalition led to a minimum of 200,000 civilian deaths.

In Afghanistan, eight years of war have merely multiplied the Afghan people’s miseries, and there is no sign yet that the militants are on the run. In the case of Pakistan, drone attacks, first launched during the Bush presidency, have continued. Although these have targeted militants, there has been considerable collateral damage. Also, the Bush administration’s blind support for Israel and its abstention from voting on a UN resolution calling for a cessation of Israeli strikes in Gaza created revulsion in the Muslim world.

The Obama administration must try to find a negotiated solution to the Afghan war, and it must translate into reality its commitment to the two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Adm Mullen’s observations should be noted by the American media, especially some of the leading dailies which have played a major role in distorting reality and portraying the Taliban as the true representatives of Muslims worldwide.