Ma'a Salaama, Karen!

Is this the best we can do?

After two years on the job, Karen Hughes, a Bush crony from Texas, is resigning as under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. She has been tasked with promoting a better understanding of America around the globe-- bolstering Uncle Sam's negative ratings in public opinion, especially in the Muslim world. She replaced an Alabaman, Margaret Tutweiler, who had quit after less than a year in the job. And Tutwiler had replaced yet another Texan, Charlotte Beers, who came on board right after 9/11 to improve America's image in the Muslim world and left after only a year and a half. Hughes's departure comes just after the resignation of her own deputy, Dina Powell, another Texan.

An American diplomat got it right after Beers arrived in the Middle East on a trip, in early 2002, I believe. She castigated a certain embassy for not doing a better job of convincing the local media of America's policies. To which the dip retorted to the former Madison Avenue advertising hotshot, something to the effect, Give us a better product to sell.

Still, the mission of public diplomacy is a noble one. There's more to America than its Middle East policies. And not all of its Middle East policies are automatically opposed by Arabs and Muslims. I'm not sure you really need an undersecretary for public diplomacy; presumably, that's the job that diplomats are supposed to do every day. Certainly, the best among them--and I could make a long list here-- are out meeting people, arguing America's case, listening to local views and trying to bridge understanding.

But if you are going to make a big deal out of appointing high fliers like Karen Hughes in order to underscore the importance you assign to the task, then find somebody who knows what they are doing, and who's willing to see the mission out.

As far as I can see from here, Hughes bombed. I tagged along for part of her first big Middle East tour--to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey-- and she was ridiculed at every stop along the way. Hughes faced her most hostile reception in Istanbul, where a gathering intended to promote women's rights deteriorated into angry denunciations of U.S. policies. In Cairo, a woman snapped, "You used to be!" when Hughes told an audience of former Egyptian exchange students that America was a “welcoming country." In Jidda, some women at a university meeting challenged Hughes's implication that Saudi women were oppressed, with one declaring, "We're all pretty happy." Some of the Saudi women even criticized Hughes for denouncing the Saudi ban on women driving. I'm sure those women would like the right to drive, but they weren't going to let Hughes use that as a cultural stick to beat their country with.

Hughes had some dubious ideas of how America could improve its message. She started a Digital Outreach Team so the U.S. government has a "presence in Arabic cyberspace" that "ensures that U.S. policies and values are included in the conversation about issues central to the ideological debate." Is that really worth the effort? She set up a Rapid Response Unit to monitor foreign media and provide embassies and U.S. military commands with talking points. Isn't that what embassies and military commands are supposed to do?

She made sure that Arabic-speaking diplomats appeared on Arabic television more often. That didn't always work very well. After State Department official Alberto Fernandez told an Al Jazeera talk show that "undoubtedly there was arrogance and stupidity from the United States in Iraq," he disappeared from the airwaves. Hughes also set up a Counterterrorism Communications Center, to "develop and deliver effective messages to undermine ideological support for terror and to counter terrorist propaganda."

The follow-on of all this was a surge in terrorist recruits in Iraq and a further steady decline of America's standing in the Arab world. Spin, I guess, doesn't work as well in the Middle East as it does in Washington.

--By Scott MacLeod/Doha