The resignation of long-time Bush confidante Karen Hughes as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy after 31 months in the job is yet another event which encapsulates the blundering incoherence of this US administrations. Hughes’ foremost task was to improve the image of the United States in the Muslim world. She quickly set off on a tour during which she told a female audience in Jeddah that Arab women were not happy and an Indonesian press conference that Saddam Hussein had gassed hundreds of thousands of his own people. Even measured by the spin doctoring she was hired to undertake, this was an abysmally ill-informed start. And she didn’t get any better.
This summer the State Department’s media affairs director, Price Floyd, quit his 17-year diplomatic career in frustration at Hughes’ insistence that America’s image problem could be fixed with glitzy PR methods, rather than by addressing the underlying issues that caused Muslim countries to be profoundly suspicious of the Bush administration’s real goals in Iraq and the wider Middle East.
Hughes’ resignation may be the most realistic move she has made. It recognizes her failure to improve the Muslim world’s view of United States policy and, since perceptions have actually worsened during her tenure. The Bush White House is mired in its intransigent insistence that everything it has done in Iraq, before and after the invasion has been incontrovertibly right. Where there have been failures, they have been of the fault of military commanders, intelligence chiefs or the ungrateful Iraqis themselves. The errors have never come from the White House.
Given this head-in-the-sand agenda, there was nothing that a spin doctor, however smart, could do to change Muslim opinion. The problem has been that US actions have never matched their words. Their slavish support for Israel and rejection of the result of a democratic Palestinian election both underpin profound regional skepticism. Washington is simply not interested in any solution that is not its own — however half-baked and ill-informed.
The very grounds for attacking Iraq in 2003 have been proven lies. Yet instead of admitting it was wrong, the Bush administration insists that despite everything, it was right to overthrow Saddam anyway. In the face of the chaos into which the occupation has plunged Iraq, Bush and his people continue to maintain they are following a clear and correct strategy. The only admission of any error whatsoever is that it is all going to take a little longer than originally expected.
The extent to which US standing has plunged since 9/11 is quite remarkable. In the wake of those monstrous attacks, the entire world was behind Bush’s proclaimed war on terror. In the last four years, that support and good will, not least in the Muslim world, have been betrayed and squandered by a president who refused to listen to good advice.
