NEW YORK - As Karen Hughes, the close confidante of President George W Bush,
gives up her mission to improve the US image abroad - amid mixed reviews of her
performance - her replacement is already facing criticism for his support of
the Iraq war and a number of alleged ethical lapses.
Hughes, a key advisor to the president since his days as governor of Texas,
resigned her post as under-secretary of state for public diplomacy last week
after just under two years in the post to
return to private life in Texas. Bush has nominated James Glassman as her
replacement.
Glassman is currently chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG),
the organization responsible for conveying Washington's messages through
television and radio to the Middle East, Iran, Cuba, and other areas of the
world. Washington-watchers have speculated that he was nominated because he had
already been confirmed by the Senate for his BBG post.
Critics of Glassman, who is a staunch neo-conservative, point to his early and
enthusiastic support for the US invasion of Iraq.
In an article he wrote in 2003, Glassman said, "... the anti-war protesters
remain clueless. They're still planning their marches. Instead, they should be
apologizing. Before the war, they told us that 500,000 Iraqis would be killed
in Dresden-like bombing, that we would precipitate an eco-catastrophe by
pushing Saddam to set fire to his oil wells, that millions of people would flee
the country, that thousands of our own troops would be killed, that the Arab
'street' would rise up, that terrorist attacks would resume ferociously on our
homeland, that Iraqis would tenaciously resist our colonization of their land,
that we would become bogged down in urban warfare, and on and on."
Glassman continued, "In fact, none of that has happened. It has been a war
unmatched in history, with relatively few civilian and allied casualties and
the prime objectives - control of the capital and the destruction of Saddam's
regime - achieved in only a few weeks. Conscientious opponents of the war
should say they were wrong, wrong, wrong - on all counts."
A year later, after the Abu Ghraib detainee scandal hit the headlines, he
wrote, "Recent events in Iraq, especially in Abu Ghraib prison, emphasize once
more the dire need for serious, strategic and properly funded public diplomacy
- the promotion of the national interest by informing, engaging and influencing
people around the world."
Like Hughes, Glassman has little Middle East experience. He was a member of an
advisory group on public diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World, chaired by
former Ambassador Edward Djerejian, who has been one of Hughes' supporters.
Hughes, who played a key role in crafting the pre-Iraq invasion "message" to US
voters, was a Texas television reporter before becoming one of Bush's most
trusted advisors.
Glassman, a former syndicated columnist, is perhaps best known for his
prediction that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would reach 36,000 during the
last bull market. A resident fellow at the right-wing think-tank, the American
Enterprise Institute, he is the founder and long-time "host" of Tech Central
Station, an Internet opinion site published by the Republican firm, the DCI
Group. Sponsors of TCS include fast-food giant McDonald's and the oil company,
Exxon Mobil.
Glassman has been accused of a number of ethical breaches reportedly committed
on behalf of the DCI Group. In 2006, St Petersburg Times reporter Bill Adair
revealed that Glassman's had used TCS and his syndicated column to champion the
interests of the website's corporate sponsors without disclosing these
relationships.
Adair cited Glassman as one of those who profit from this practice. He noted
that Glassman had denounced "Super Size Me", a 2004 movie critical of
McDonald's nutritional policies, but failed to disclose that "McDonald's is a
major sponsor" of Glassman's website. The film said McDonald's was partly to
blame for the nation's obesity epidemic.
Glassman takes on his new State Department post at time when most reliable
polls are finding US credibility abroad lower than it has ever been. He faces
an overseas environment increasingly hostile to the US due to such factors as
the "marketing" of post September 11, 2001, fear of Saddam Hussein's weapons of
mass destruction, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, failure to seriously
address the Israeli-Palestinian issue, the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo scandals,
and revelations of "enhanced" interrogation techniques, CIA renditions and
"black sites" where detainees become "ghost prisoners".
Samar Jarrah, a Florida-based Palestinian-American who is a radio talk show
host and the author of "Arab Voices Speak to American Hearts", summed up the
feelings of many ordinary Middle Easterners.
She told Inter Press Service, "If the US asks me to take Karen Hughes' or James
Glassman's job tomorrow, I would fail too. What do I tell people in the Arab
and Muslim world when they ask me, 'Why did you go to war in Iraq knowing that
there were no weapons of mass destruction, no connection to 9/11, and did you
have any plans for the day after?' Any attempt on my behalf to answer these
questions truthfully will lead to my firing."
Jarah added, "Karen and Jim assume that Arabs and Muslims do not read and do
not have a clue. Can you imagine what my answers can be when I am asked about
Israel, Iran, supporting torturous dictators in the Arab world? Anyone is
doomed to fail. I bet you a million dollars that it is Karen who got a lesson
or two from her job and this is why she quit. It is a dead end job."
Hughes' departure as Washington's chief spokesperson abroad has been greeted
with mixed assessments of her performance. While she successfully pushed for
substantial budget increases, experts say there has been little substantive
change, and few new ideas, in US public diplomacy during her tenure. Her
so-called "listening tours" of contentious areas, including the Middle East,
have brought charges of "cultural insensitivity".
One assessment comes from Patricia H Kushlis, a former career Foreign Service
Officer with the US Information Agency (USIA) from 1970-1998 and co-author,
with Patricia Lee Sharpe and Cheryl R Rofer, of WhirledView, a widely respected
foreign affairs and public diplomacy blog.
On the positive side, Kushlis told IPS, "I think that Karen Hughes' basic
accomplishment was remaining in office for more than a year. True, she
increased the budgets for exchanges - particularly for bringing foreigners here
- and restored portions of core public diplomacy functions, like media reaction
or rapid response units, which had been allowed to lay fallow since the demise
of USIA in 1999."
On the negative side, Kushlis told IPS, "Hughes apparently failed to recognize
or act upon the central problem - a bifurcated and under-funded public
diplomacy effort is an anemic approach to solving much more fundamental public
diplomacy issues both in terms of policy and structure. Clearly, if Hughes did
understand the problems she did not use her proximity to President Bush to
initiate the fundamental structural changes that could and should have
happened."
She added, "As for James Glassman's appointment to replace her, it seems to me
that he will be a 'place holder' at best. It's far too late in this
administration's day, even if its luster were still there, for Glassman or
anyone else to accomplish much of anything - if indeed he has any interest in
doing so."
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