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In a great example of how bad ideas get funneled through the neoconservative message machine and on to your breakfast table (or, more likely, discarded on the seat next to you on the subway), the NY Sun seconds Cliff May's nomination of Fouad Ajami to succeed Karen Hughes as the State Department's under secretary for public diplomacy.
"Of Professor Ajami, a Lebanese-born Shia Muslim and an American citizen who serves is the Majid Khadduri Professor of Middle East Studies at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins, Mr. May, himself president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote: "No one understands the Arab and Muslim worlds better than Ajami. And no one can better explain America and this White House than Ajami."Mr. Ajami would provide America with a spokesman with erudition and eloquence precisely in the areas most important to us right now, and it is hard to see how the Democrats could oppose him, though he was for the war in Iraq and has remained a defender. He has called the allied occupation is "The Foreigner's Gift" to the Arabs.[...]But much as the Democrats may question him on these assertions, he will be able to put them — and other critics, including in the Middle East — on the defensive themselves. Liberals, he wrote about the Iraq war, opposed the war out of "a surly belief that liberty can't be spread to Muslim lands."Yes, because clearly what's lacking in American diplomacy right now is the ability to grapple with transparently ridiculous strawman arguments.
