[T]he First Lady giving a flashy and warm thumbs-up to Mubarak's sham reforms is just about the worst possible thing for American credibility in the democracy promotion business. It's just devastating. Arabs want to know whether the US is sincere in pushing democracy, and this tells them, once again, that it isn't. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if Laura Bush were honestly reflecting her husband's private views, since I've never thought that he was all that serious about promoting democracy in the Arab world. Maybe it should bother some of the "tsunami of Bushy democracy" enthusiasts over on the other side of the aisle, but that's their business.the saddest thing is that many people in the u.s. are completely unaware of what buffoons the bush administration is making of this country in the arab world:
It's a public diplomacy disaster, a real fiasco, coming on the heels of so many others.
-by showing its ignorance that lebanon ever had elections before the iraqi invasion
-by posing with the jordanian king at the white house and praising him for his support of democracy in the region on the same day that his government is in the midst of a harsh crackdown on independent opposition
-and now when the first lady praising egypt's democratic reforms, just as any meaningful opposition is being barred from participating.
all the PR and marketing in the world doesn't make up for these types of mis-steps.
