'Brand America,' Now with More Terror

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While George W. Bush's domestic poll numbers find a new low [6], the U.S. image abroad continues to scrape bottom. Addressing the White House's failure to win "hearts and minds," John Brown [7] writes, "Personnel and programs matter in foreign policy, but what counts most is policy itself. ... This policy, no matter how public diplomacy [8] or propaganda [9] 'explains' it, cannot possibly win the world over because of its appalling consequences, shocking and sickening to non-Americans if not to Americans as well ... . Thanks to the mass media and the Internet, the abominations of a terror-obsessed U.S. policy have become the new American 'brand' worldwide, with the administration's calls for planetary democratization -- so selectively implemented -- widely seen as fake packaging, hypocrisy at its worst."