What's the Point of Having Karen Hughes Around? Posted by Shadi Hamid

We hear stories like this everyday. And, everyday, I lament the fact that this administration, through its unabashed devotion to police-state style torture, has destroyed so completely our credibility in the Middle East.

According to medical records obtained by TIME, a 20-year-old named Yusuf al-Shehri, jailed since he was 16, was regularly strapped into a specially designed feeding chair that immobilizes the body at the legs, arms, shoulders and head. Then a plastic tube, sometimes as much as 50% bigger than the type commonly used for feeding incapacitated patients, was inserted through his nose and down his throat - a procedure that can trigger nausea, bleeding and diarrhea.

What can you say to that, really ? I thought that  "they" hated us when I was living in Jordan last year. Well, I've spent the last couple weeks in Cairo and Amman, and it's gotten worse. Can you say "powder keg"? It's time for Karen Hughes to call it a day. Our public diplomacy operation is an absolute joke. When someone slits your neck, you don't get a band aid, you go to the freakin' hospital. Packaging is now pointless. What's the point of sending Karen Hughes out to the Middle East to "listen" and "engage," when all the while, the Bush administration does its best to kill the American ideal in the eyes of more than a billion Muslims?

When Egyptians bring up the fact that we use the same "interrogation" methods in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as the regime of President-for-Eternity Hosni Mubarak what am I supposed to say? All you can really do is nod your head in utter resignation and acknowledge that it will take us at least 20 years to undo the damage that the Republicans have inflicted.

Are the Democrats up to the challenge? I'm not entirely sure. John Kerry somehow managed to NOT bring up torture, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib in his televised debates with Bush in 2004. Get Bob Schrum out and keep him out. Get rid of these consultants who destroy the soul of our party and make us unable to stand up for anything, even something so basic and obvious as not torturing people.

Comments

[Zathras]

My dear fellow, the campaign consultants ARE your party. No nationally prominent Democrat would do anything important without consulting them. That surely says that consultants' influence is greater than it should be. It also says something about the politicians they work for.

At some point, Democrats have got to understand that they don't lose elections because their campaign tradecraft isn't good enough. They lose elections because their candidates aren't good enough. John Kerrey and John Edwards didn't shrink from mentioning Abu Ghraib -- perhaps the least ambiguous instance of detainee abuse -- during the 2004 campaign because they were led astray by wicked counsellors, but because they are moral cowards. Honestly, when you deliberately put up showhorse Senators for President and Vice President you shouldn't expect profiles in political courage.

Surely the point at which this realization ought to be reached is now, two and one-half years before the 2008 election. Consider this thought: none of the Democratic candidates for national office in 2000 or 2004 was as good a man or as accomplished a public servant as Walter Mondale, the party's candidate in 1984. Yet Mondale got swamped by Ronald Reagan, and the more recent candidates just barely lost to George W. Bush. What does that tell you?

It should tell you that your more recent candidates were no damned good. They both lost elections they should have won, especially Gore. The response to that from most Democrats has always been the weakest possible -- that even Gore and Kerry would be better than George Bush. Not exactly going for greatness there, are you?

And it looks like the Democrats are preparing to make the same mistakes all over again. Their frontrunner for 2008 is a Senator and national political figure because of who she married and for no other reason. Behind her are Gore and Kerry, who think their having lost campaigns they should have won qualifies them to be nominated again. And Russ Feingold, trying to show he can do something more than help pass John McCain's legislation. And John Edwards, putting to the test the idea that hair and teeth are enough to win the Presidency.

In the fall of 2008, Democrats may have to live with the argument that at least their guy is better than the Republican candidate. But it's only the late spring of 2006. Is this crowd really the best you guys can do?

[Eric Martin]

So Kerry and Edwards are weak because they won't step up and take a stand, and Democrats (like them and others in the Party) are too cautious and beholden to consultants, but then Russ Feingold takes several bold stands and he's....grandstanding?

Is there any possible position a Dem could take that would come out positive under those criteria?

Does the GOP use consultants as well, or are they the Party of "Teh Authentic"

[kb]

snort.

you really think anyone outside of the US actually cares which of the business owned parties is actually responsible for the war crimes being committed?

'oooh no, we didn't mean to torture people. it was just ,you know ,they were brown...'

'he killed himelf to annoy us', not because we'd locked him up without evidence for for 4 years.....,no surely not but just to make us look bad...., yeah thats right.

Yeah i can't understand why non americans regard the whole "WAR ON TERROR" with contempt.After all our attack on iraq 'THE CENTRAL FRONT IN THE WAR ON TERROR' has been so succesfull.

Since when has such ridiculous conventional wisdom been