Innocent Abroad by Leon Hadar

There are no signs that President Bush’s public diplomacy is helping win the hearts and minds of either the elites or the publics in the Middle East —or for that matter in most parts of the world, including among traditional American allies in Canada and Western Europe. If anything, the discrepancy between the bombastic and misleading American message and the reality of U.S. policies on the ground in Iraq, Israel/Palestine, and elsewhere only helps fuel more anti-Americanism. This discrepancy between the neocon propaganda and the outcome of Bush’s foreign policy is also responsible for the dramatic erosion in domestic public support for U.S. policies in Iraq as more and more Americans, including Joe Blow, seem to be deserting the faith-based community in favor of the reality-based one.