To say public diplomacy hasn't been this administration's forte is a truism and an understatement. Still, it's hard to recall any presidential initiative as spectacularly misjudged and needless since Ronald Reagan paid tribute to Nazi soldiers at Bitburg. Full Story »
Posted by Tom Cox
More polemic than anything, replete with cherry-picked facts and no effort to analyze the major efforts of American public diplomacy, including the website govcom.org, the Arab-language television stations, etc. It also simply does not deal with the fact that if you are occupying an Islamic countries, however pure your motives, you are not going to have much success. Also, I am not sure that their job is "to wage a battle of ideas against radical Islam". I would say that their job is to present America in as favorable a light as possible and to open channels for communication with those who can be persuaded to enter into dialogue. In that regard, I am not convinced of the author's claim that sending an observer to the Organization of the Islamic Conference is in any way comparable to Ronald Reagan's tribute to the S.S. troops in the Bitburg cemetery in the 1980s.
