WASHINGTON, 22 July 2005 — Middle Easterners prepare yourselves to be wooed, because the US State Department is about to launch a genuine charm offensive in your direction.
The Bush Administration wants to improve its image abroad, especially among Arabs and Muslims, as they realize their status has gone south since the US invasion in Iraq. To help achieve their goal, they are bringing trusted aids back into service and appointing Arab Americans to key positions.
Former White House counselor Karen Hughes will face confirmation hearings today by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to become the new Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy.
Hughes will take over the Bush administration’s troubled public diplomacy effort intended to improve the US image abroad, particularly in the Muslim world, where anti-Americanism has fueled extremist groups and terrorism.
The last undersecretary for public diplomacy, Margaret Tutwiler, quit last summer after less than a year on the job. The post has remained vacant since.
Hughes, 49, who has been one of President Bush’s closest advisers since his tenure as Texas governor, returns to Washington after a three-year absence to put her son through high school in Texas.
At the State Department, she will work with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to reinvigorate the campaign for “hearts and minds” overseas.
Rice has also appointed Dina Habib Powell, an Egyptian born former White House personnel director, to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs, Powell was sworn in Monday and will work directly under Hughes.
The appointment of Powell as an Assistant Secretary of State is part of an effort by the Bush Administration to include Arab Americans in prominent positions.
Rice called Powell “the embodiment of what it means to be an American and to be part of a multiethnic democracy.” Powell said she would be “listening and understanding as much as speaking” in her two roles of Assistant Secretary of State and deputy to Karen Hughes.
Powell, 31, is the youngest person ever to direct the presidential personnel office and its estimated 35 employees. She is considered to be a “rising star” in President Bush’s administration.
Fluent in Arabic, Powell has represented the administration in key forums across the Middle East on the president’s freedom and reform agenda, the White House said.
Prior to joining the Bush administration, Powell served as director of congressional affairs at the Republican National Committee and as an aide to former US House Majority Leader Dick Armey, (R-Texas).
Born to middle-class parents, Dina is the daughter of Husni Habib, a Captain in the Egyptian army and Huda Suliman, a graduate of the American University in Cairo. She was four years old when her parents, Christian Copts, decided to immigrate to the US.
They settled in Dallas, Texas in 1977, where her father worked as a bus driver until he opened a convenience store. Dina is married to public affairs executive Richard Powell and has a 3-year-old daughter.
Washington insiders question whether the Hughes-Powell team will be able to overturn America’s tarnished image abroad. Despite exchange programs, foreign language media, including what one colleague called “the useless” Radio Al-Sawa, critics say this Administration’s public diplomacy campaign to promote American values of democracy, tolerance and pluralism abroad while combating negative images propagated in many parts of the world has largely been a failure.
The State Department spent $685 million on public diplomacy in 2004, but critics complain that it has not been increased enough since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that most of it has not targeted the Muslim world.
Though the impact of Hughes’s reemergence in Washington would be largely lost on her new foreign audience, here in the capital it has tongues wagging. It also provides a reminder of the president’s second-term penchant for rewarding loyal Texans, including Hughes and Powell, to top posts here.
