What are the Repubs trying to do?

With the image problem America has around the world, thanks to Bush & Co, you would think they would be trying to do something about it.  All they seem to be doing lately is piss more people off.

The Repubs have tried to blame Newsweek for the riots and deaths that happened on the story that appeared.  From everything I've read around the Middle East, what happened was planned a long time ago.  The article just gave them the excuse to start the beginning of a new tactic to win back Arab sympathy.

Laura Bush gets sent to the Middle East on a goodwill tour to try and do what?  Who knows.  All she's done is cause more protests.

The latest story out of the Middle East has me truly concerned that the Repubs have a plan and it isn't good.

Follow along here, it may seem minor, but with everything else going on this is only adding fuel to the fire right now...

Editorial: A Smith on the Loose
23 May 2005

I don't know anything about Sen. Smith and if anyone approved his speech, but even I know that if you want to win back hearts and minds, you don't do it this way.

When a high-ranking US official speaks publicly about the Middle East, people in the region listen. They listen of course but they do not necessarily agree. This is exactly the case with the recent comments from the Republican senator from Oregon, Gordon Smith. Smith has brazenly advised Arab leaders to focus on injustices in their own countries and reminded them that US policy is security for Israel first and justice for Palestinians "if possible."

Speaking at the World Economic Forum conference on the Middle East, the senator did not stop with those words. "Until we have someone on the other side who is willing to say `Yes,' we're not going to continue to prostitute the American presidency to people who aren't serious." These statements are, to say the least, audacious. The United States, despite being the strongest military and economic power at present, has no business prying, meddling and interfering into the internal affairs of other countries. Iraq should have told them that they have no such a blank check.

The senator's statements will only inflame already heated passions in the Middle East in the wake of the Newsweek fiasco. America just doesn't learn.

Arab News Editoral in full

Editorial: Outsourcing of Torture
21 May 2005

I'm including this bit to show that the Arabs do know what needs to be done, even if the US govt doesn't.

In the tough world of realpolitik, maybe this duplicity is not so important. But among ordinary people across the world, it is. President Bush's readiness to abandon his own high standards just whenever it suits him is corrosive of fragile confidence. Washington's double standard is a betrayal of all those who hope that somehow America can take a leading role in the region and not only defeat Al-Qaeda but can also bring a just and lasting settlement to Palestine. Tragically, every time the United States approves an abuse of human rights, it gives another victory to the terrorists and another defeat to all decent people, who expected better of the Land of the Free whose citizens pledge "liberty and justice for all".

Editoral in full

The one thing most Arabs have admired about America is our "Land of the Free" and how we use to fight for Liberty and Justice for all.  The problems in the Middle East are growing by the day.  Every time Washington opens it's mouth lately, they have made more people angry.  Even the moderate Arabs know something is brewing in the entire Middle East and it's not going to be good.

Is our govt just so blind that they fall to see, or is it part of their plan.  We have a govt with no diplomacy skills what so ever.  All they ever use is the stick, never the carrot.  Condi was the wrong person for State and if Bolton gets to the UN, I fear that we are going to left to hang out to dry on our own by the rest of the world.  

I just can't believe that our govt can commit blunder after blunder and not learn from those mistakes.  I think they set a course in 2000 and have never looked back. I hope I'm wrong.

More and more of the Arab newspapers I read online, print letters from Americans.  The Majority are telling the people there that they don't like what's going on in our name.  Should we be writing more letters to Arab Newspapers to try and help them see that America is more than George Bush?  Because they don't see us protesting in the streets here, they think we don't care what is happening in their region.  

Is it up to us to try and fix the image the world has of us as a people?  I fear that the rest of the world takes their view that "we the people" aren't willing to stand up to our govt and that we'd rather just along with them.  Their image of us now is that we are all Fox watchers.  America has always been the dream of many people around the world.  The one place they wanted to come.  We are now the last country that most want to even visit, let alone live in.