Washington, September 30, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The first foreign trip of US Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes, that took her to the Middle East, was dubbed "absurd" by a US analyst, casting heavy doubts on possibilities of success in her job to improve a badly tarnished US image abroad.

Anthony Cordesman, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, sharply criticized the US public diplomacy campaign, saying it had amounted to "a dialogue of the absurd" run by inexperienced officials, according to Reuters.

"Quite frankly, when I look at what we've done in the field we've turned democracy into a four-letter word," he told a congressional panel Wednesday September 28, as Hughes was on the final leg of her trip, that took her first to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, then Turkey.

"I think we have done in many cases more harm than good, and if nothing else, if we simply stopped that, it would be a step forward."

On a five-day trip to the three Arab and Muslim heavyweights, Hughes learned that a lot more than “Engage, Exchange, Educate and Empower” have been lost in translation between Americans and Muslims, according to Reuters.

The US envoy was in the Mideast for explaining her "four E" strategy to an audience in Cairo, Jeddah and Ankara.

"They probably don't translate very well into Arabic," she was quoted as saying with a laugh.

Hughes is a close confidante and image-shaper of President George W. Bush with no previous experience in foreign diplomacy other than accompanying him abroad during trips in the first years of his presidency, according to Reuters.

Hughes was told deeds, not words were the key for improving the image. (Reuters)

During her visit to Cairo, Hughes tried to convey a message to Muslims that the Americans share religious grounds with them as two divine religion followers.

Hughes held meetings with religious leaders to show Muslims that Americans too were guided by strong convictions.

But in Ankara, a woman complained about US preachers telling their congregations that Bush launched the Iraq war to "facilitate Christ coming back into the world," a flagrant contradiction with Muslim beliefs that such claims were promoted by astray Jews and Christian neo-conservatives.

It was a point of attack against her during her Ankara visit.

"I was very cognizant that this was a challenge," she said of her mission to find out why so many Muslims have such a hostile view of the United States and what she can do about it.

"I expected that I would hear from a lot of people who disagree with our policies and we did hear that," Hughes told reporters Thursday, September 29, on her way home to Washington.

But she said she did not expect the degree to which Muslims' "perceptions of America are related to how Americans are seeing them."

Some of the criticism Hughes encountered clearly went beyond perceptions, resting in the heart of US policy.

The Iraq invasion-turned-occupation and Bush's strategy to bring democracy to the wider Middle East dogged her every stop.

"I am not anti-American, but I am anti-war and anti-violence," Serpil Sancar of the Women's Studies Center at Ankara University, told Hughes.

Many were forthright and passionate in expressing their opposition to the invasion of Iraq and the US push for democracy in the region.

"War is not necessary for peace," said Feray Salman, a human rights activist. She said that Washington "can never ever export democracy and freedom from one country to another."