I‘ve written several times about our State Department, it’s failures at Middle East diplomacy and the attempts at privatizing our State Department. Coincidentally, much of State’s duties in that region have been assumed by Defense, which introduces even more problems into the mixture.

The regime's answer to all the failures: more propaganda.

Mountain Runner has put up a very good article, as one of a series asking “What the Hell is Karen Hughes Doing?” This latest is a compilation of his* own writing, and some others who have thoughts on the matter.

Ms. Hughes needs to start being effective now and stop wasting our time and money. In a very real sense, Ms. Hughes' failure to lead puts the lives of our soldiers at risk by not countering insurgent propaganda in Iraq, the Middle East, or elsewhere recruits and money flows from. Overall, this is a national security issue as the enemy becomes stronger and more empowered by our failure to participate effectively, if at all, in modern information warfare.

It’s my perception as an outsider that State suffered terribly in status while under the direction of Colin Powell. His usefulness to the Bu$h malAdministration, and hence the utility of State, stopped right after they persuaded him to disgrace this country at the UN.

A quote from an excellent article by Stew Magnusson:

If the United States is to help “reverse the flow of ideas,” who is responsible?

Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, at the hearing asked the Pentagon’s Doran if anyone was in charge of countering extremist ideology.

Karen Hughes, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, was his answer.

Hughes was a close political advisor to President Bush, tasked with reinvigorating the State Department’s public diplomacy sector, which had its post-Cold War budgets eviscerated by Congress.

But within the State Department, Rand analysts said, there is little consensus on what public diplomacy means. Is it changing opinions, garnering support for policies or marginalizing extremists? The sector gets short shrift there. And at the Pentagon, the public diplomacy office didn’t open its doors until more than five years after 9/11.

“This strategic uncertainty ensures suboptimal policy performance,” said the Rand study.

I suppose no callused observer of George Bu$h and Dick Cheney is surprised at their disdain of diplomacy. Autocrats are accustomed to demanding what they want, and not in seeking rational compromise with other actors. Their public attacks against critics of their policies of aggression and their two rejections of the results of legitimate elections in Gaza should give pause to anyone foolish enough to think these two respect anything other than raw, naked force.

No one should expect great deeds or successful formulas from a peaceful source as long as these two rule the country.

* I said “his” from reflex. The way I learned English grammar assigns the masculine pronoun to unspecified refferants. The recent revelation about our valuable Digby has not yet changed 50 plus years of reading and writing.