Where is Karen Hughes? What happened to Condoleezza Rice's commitment to public diplomacy; everything from creating "forward bases" to "rapid response teams" within the U.S. diplomatic corps to deal with the potentially explosive issues of the day?
Over the past few days two major events with serious public diplomacy implications for the U.S. have occurred, and Ms. Hughes' department appears to be either in hiding, or actually contributing to the growing negative impression of the U.S. by the outside world. In one instance, Israel's firing of rockets onto a Gaza beach and killing a family of Palestinian picnickers, the U.S. reaction of "regret" may appear proper to most Americans but not enough to people in the Islamic world. "Condemnation", a far stronger word used whenever Palestinians kill Israeli civilians, is what they expected, and if we think the Arabs don't understand nuance, then we need to think again. Granted, there is no moral equivalence between a terrorist action and what appears to be an accident by Israeli forces (for no one is suggesting a Palestinian family were targets of Israeli forces), but the fact remains that the policy of shooting rockets into civilian areas, even though there is almost a guarantee of collateral damage, or civilian deaths, has not been disowned by the Israelis. Regrettable deaths, yes; but they will happen again. The U.S., as Israel's prime supporter and main ally, is, whether we like it or not, always held partly responsible for these kinds of deaths by most Palestinians and the so-called "Arab street" (or even "Muslim street"). So the U.S. response that the deaths of the Palestinian innocents was "regrettable" is not enough for those "streets", and this is where Karen Hughes' job is supposed to come in. Karen, one would think, would have taken a plane to Israel to publicly express U.S. concern over the deaths, then driven into Gaza, and met with the surviving members of the family as well as Palestinian leaders (okay, perhaps not Hamas, as that would be asking too much of the Bush administration). Images of Ms. Hughes, one of President Bush's closest advisers, commiserating with Palestinians and showing a genuine U.S. concern over Muslim deaths would go further to mitigate hatred of the U.S. in the region than almost anything else the State Department has come up with, and it couldn't possibly offend Israel (even if we're afraid of that) as undoubtedly most Israelis are just as horrified by the killing of innocent Palestinian men, women, children and babies as anyone else is.
Perhaps even more stunning, staggering really, is the U.S. reaction to the three suicides at the Guantanamo detention facility on the weekend. Rear Admiral Harry Harris, the camp commander, called it a form a "asymmetrical warfare" (as opposed to acts of desperation). It's perhaps asking too much for a military commander to understand public diplomacy, or to understand how his words will echo in the Arab world, but one of Karen Hughes' deputies, Colleen Graffy, said (in an interview with the BBC) that the deaths were part of a strategy and "a tactic to further the jihadi cause"; further saying that the three men "did not value their lives nor the lives of those around them". Since Ms. Hughes doesn't appear to have any Muslims on her staff, here's a little something for her and her deputies to consider: suicide is against Islam. Suicide is considered one of the greatest sins in Islam, and suicide means, to a pious Muslim, that he or she will never gain entrance to heaven. There is a reason what we call "suicide bombers" are called "martyrs", and what we would call "suicide operations" called "martyrdom operations" by terrorists, those who support the tactic and even many ordinary people in the Middle East. It's not because "martyr" just sounds better than "suicide": it's because of Islam. If, as a tactic to inflict military damage against an enemy or adversary a suicide mission is deemed necessary, then some in the Muslim world (and some Muslim clerics) claim that those suicides don't actually qualify as suicide in Allah's eyes, and whether that argument is specious is not is irrelevant, for the terrorists themselves have certainly accepted it before they've blown themselves up.
However, hanging oneself in a jail cell could hardly be defended as a "martyrdom operation" by even the most twisted or radical sheik or mullah, and to my knowledge none so far have come forward to opine on the matter. There may be doubt about the Guantanamo prisoners' guilt or innocence; there may be doubt about their contribution to terrorism, but there is absolutely no doubt that the Muslims in Guantanamo are not secular. They are as devout as they come in the Muslim world, and suicide, certainly to their families and to Muslims around the world, could only have come about as an act of sheer desperation, perhaps even as a response to physical or psychological torture. It actually doesn't matter whether that was the case or not, but for an official in the State Department (whose job it is to promote the image of the United States) to characterize it as different (even if she really believes that to be the case) is sheer lunacy and puts her at direct odds with the very people she's supposed to be cultivating to her side. And to what benefit? Does Ms. Graffy not understand than characterizing the deaths as a political statement means that she is suggesting the victims weren't good Muslims (for a good Muslim cannot commit suicide)?
Rather than shoot off her mouth in ignorance of Muslim sensibilities (and even the proscription against suicide), Ms. Graffy could have gotten on a plane to Saudi Arabia and Yemen (where the suicide victims were from) to better explain to those publics how the U.S. regrets their deaths. And perhaps even how the U.S. government will be investigating not only their cases, but also looking into how to prevent further deaths in the camp.