Goldfarb is away this morning, intrepidly covering a Hillary Clinton event at Wellesley College. I was invited to tag along, but found the offer eminently resistible. Besides, I vowed never to return to the Wellesley campus after one of Wellesley's fetching co-eds rejected me some twenty years ago. Anyway, with Goldfarb on assignment, it falls to me to provide the WWS with at least a modicum of fresh content.
We would be remiss here if we didn't in some way acknowledge long-time Bush associate Karen Hughes's belated departure from government. Ms. Hughes's latest assignment was admittedly an impossible one; as head of public diplomacy at the State Department, it was her job to make Muslim nations like us. In the Byzantine world of Bush personnel selection, Ms. Hughes was perfect for the job. After all, she did speak some Spanish.
Ms. Hughes had a bumpy ride while trying to bridge the gap of thirteen centuries of estrangement. The New York Times reports today:
Shortly after taking up her job, she told an audience of 500 Saudi women that she hoped some day they would be able to drive and "fully participate in society"; but many of the women expressed resentment at the American assumption that everyone wanted to live like them.
The fact that Karen Hughes failed to make the Islamic world love us during her two years giving it a whirl is hardly her fault. Larger forces are at work, the kind that even the most accomplished PR maven couldn't affect. If Saudi women truly prefer a society where "honor killings" are practiced and school girls are locked inside inside a burning building because they're not wearing their abayas, bringing our two societies together may be more than just a public relations job. More likely, contra the New York Times, it's Saudi men who prefer such a society and Saudi women dare not speak out against it. Regardless, breeching the gap between two societies as different as ours and the Saudis' doesn't properly belong in the PR realm. Pretending otherwise, as Ms. Hughes's assignment did, was nothing short of delusional.
It speaks well of Karen Hughes that she took on such an impossible task in an effort to serve her country. It speaks ill of our State Department that six years after 9/11 it remains so determinedly fond of its patented, irresolute form of "diplomacy" that it thinks a little PR-flavored sweet talk can bridge the cultural chasm between America and significant swaths of the Islamic world.
