[NYTr] Bush Names New International Spin Master to Replace Hughes

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

IPS - Dec 18, 2007
http://www.ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=40516


Bush's New Spin Master a Lame Duck?

by William Fisher

NEW YORK, Dec 18 (IPS) - As Karen Hughes, the close confidante of
President George W. Bush, gives up her mission to improve the U.S.
image abroad -- amid dedicedly 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.
President Bush has nominated James Glassman as her replacement.

Glassman is currently chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors
(BBG), the organisation 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 Glassman
was nominated because he had already been confirmed by the Senate for
his BBG post.

Critics of Glassman, who is a staunch neoconservative, point to his
early and enthusiastic support for the U.S. 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 apologising. 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 colonisation 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,
emphasise 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 aadvisory 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 U.S. 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 (AEI), he is the founder
and long-time "host" of Tech Central Station (TCS), 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 U.S. credibility abroad lower than it has
ever been. He faces an overseas environment increasingly hostile to the
U.S. due to such factors as the "marketing" of post 9/11 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 IPS, "If the U.S. 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 you did you have any plans for the day after?' Any attempt
on my behalf to answer these questions truthfully will lead to my
firing."

Jarrah 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 U.S. 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 U.S. Information Agency 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 that "Hughes apparently failed
to recognise 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 lustre were still there, for
Glassman or anyone else to accomplish much of anything -- if indeed he
has any interest in doing so."

(END/2007)