Ohio Governor and GOP presidential primary candidate John Kasich has a great idea for fighting terrorism: federal programs spreading Christianity and Judaism in the Middle East and beyond.
Kasich floated that idea during a Nov. 17 speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. in the wake of attacks by affiliates of the Islamic State in Paris earlier this month.
“U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting have lost their focus on the case for Western values and ideals and effectively countering our opponents’ propaganda and disinformation,” Kasich said during his speech. “I will consolidate them into a new agency that has a clear mandate to promote the core, Judeo-Christian Western values that we and our friends and allies share.”
The idea has drawn sharp rebuke, with many deriding it as a call for the creation of propaganda. Even some of Kasich’s fellow Republicans balked at the proposal.
“I don’t think we should be promoting Judeo-Christian values in the Arab world,” said U.S. Senator and fellow GOP presidential candidate Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. “I think that was the Crusades.”
Initially, Kasich defended that plan, but later walked back on advocating a new federal agency, saying he was merely pushing for further promotion of pro-Christian and Judaic messages through already-existing channels like Voice of America, a government-sponsored broadcasting effort that reaches as many as 188 million people abroad.
That station was created in 1942 as the official broadcast institution of the United States government. During the Cold War, it was used to broadcast pro-western radio messages to those living in the Soviet Union. Today, it broadcasts TV and radio programs in 41 foreign languages as well as English.
Despite Kasich’s walk back on creating a new federal agency, critics have called his idea tone-deaf at best.
“When you say that phrase, ‘We’ve gotta promote Judeo-Christian values around the world,’ particularly to the Middle East, in this atmosphere it can come across as a little anti-Islam,” NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd said in a Nov. 22 interview with Kasich.
“Tell me why I’m wrong about that,” Kasich responded in that interview, claiming that his suggestion was not meant to be anti-Islamic. “I think it’s the Western ethic, Western civilization that is under attack. This is almost a metaphysical battle where they’re saying they want to destroy our very way of life.”
This article appears in Nov 18-24, 2015.