'Brand America,' Now with More Terror

While George W. Bush's domestic poll numbers find a new low, the U.S. image abroad continues to scrape bottom. Addressing the White House's failure to win "hearts and minds," John Brown writes, "Personnel and programs matter in foreign policy, but what counts most is policy itself. ... This policy, no matter how public diplomacy or propaganda '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."