Assuming this story is genuinely news and not just old information spun into a look-at-the-progress-we're-making story, it's not flattering either to Karen Hughes or to the State Department. The idea that it's only now that people directing this country's public diplomacy have thought about what audiences it should be directed at, or begun to understand who influences public opinion in key countries, is astounding.
"Public Diplomacy Campaign Targets Key Nations," by Sue Pleming - Reuters (Washington, DC), 28 June 2006
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Determined to turn the tide of anti-Americanism in the Arab world, the Bush administration has drawn up a classified list of about a dozen high-priority countries on which to focus public diplomacy.
Karen Hughes, a political confidante of President George W. Bush and now his chief of public diplomacy at the State Department, said strategic plans were being developed for those "pilot" countries over the next three to five years.
"The exact list is a classified matter but it includes the type of countries where we believe it is very important to counter ideological support for extremism," Hughes said in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday.
She declined to list the nations but officials said they included Afghanistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries that were chosen based on classified information in meetings among the Pentagon, State Department, the CIA and others. Hughes also hoped the approach would improve coordination among government agencies.
One goal was to identify what Hughes called "strategic influencers" -- local people such as sports stars, clerics and others who could explain America's values and confront "ideologies of hate."
Hughes cited a recent dinner at the U.S. ambassador's home in Morocco where the person on her right was a famous cooking show host, while on her left was a track star.
"I came back and shared with others what an interesting dinner this was and how every country should look at identifying who the most influential people are," said Hughes.
She said her department would seek out clerics from Muslim nations where some Friday prayers encouraged hatred and bring those clerics to America on exchange programs.
"All the research shows that people who have been to America or know someone who has been to America are far more likely to have a positive view of our country."...
Fighting the negative fallout from the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in Iraq and the U.S. prison for foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has made her job tough.
Comments from one of her staff members that the suicides earlier this month of three Guantanamo detainees were a "great PR move" did not help, but the senior staffer, Colleen Graffy, kept her job.
Hughes said she understood that all those who dealt with the media said something they regretted later.
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