So every once and a while you read something that really fires you up. Yesterday was one of those instances. I was lying in bed, peacefully scrolling through the last several hours of tweets that I had missed while sleeping (in today’s case that would have been between 7 am and 1 pm; yeah, my schedule is that screwed up), and I came across a tweet from @nprnewsblog, whom I follow on Twitter:

Intriguing, I thought, and hardly debatable. I usually read the really controversial stuff and would have typically passed this over completely but thought I would at least get the pulse of what diplomats had to say about the subject. So I clicked on the link. It was a decent account of what, again, seemed to be obvious. Quoted in the article was an excerpt from study by Quinnipiac University professor of public relations Kathy Fitzpatrick:

An overwhelming majority (88 percent) of more than 200 former high-ranking officers in the United States Information Agency who participated in the study said the U.S. is not diplomatically prepared to address ideological threats to U.S. interests in the 21st century …

More than 80 percent of the former USIA officers rated American public diplomacy efforts today as either “poor” or “marginal.” In contrast, more than 80 percent of the former USIA officers rated America’s public diplomacy efforts during the Cold War as “good” or “excellent.”

Sounds good - again, nothing earth shattering. Then I see the following thoroughly well thought out, insightful comment by our good buddy deek:

LOL, what else would we expect from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates?

The center’s of Jihad are supposed to like us?

Sent by deek | 11:01 AM ET | 04-15-2008

Yeah, that got me out of bed. I went straight to the computer, before having any coffee or food (which is a very serious thing for those that know me), and hammered out the following response in 90 seconds:

Boy comments like deek’s show the ignorance and impudence of the neo-conservative’s school yard adolescent bully mindset. You may recall that we actually won the cold war, resoundingly in fact. If the Bushies were in office at the time we would have certainly started WWW3 and none of us would be alive because of it. Even during (failed) shows of force like the Bay of Pigs and crises like the Cuban missile crisis among others, diplomacy shows its deftness of in being able to obtain the net result desired, in spite of these failings. If we took a similar tact in the current terrorism threat, we perhaps could win the war of ideas necessary to ultimately make us safer and ultimately prevail; the current strategy (or lack thereof) is not only ineffective, it does quite the opposite, further fomenting “jihadism.”

It is becoming increasingly clear to me how collectively immature the Bush neocon ideology is. The pre-pubescent school yard bully is an appropriate metaphor. Do you actually want to accomplish greatness in your life and truly lead or is your ego so frail you have to constantly show everyone how bad ass you are? The true leader is one who can show force but never does. Ultimately the bully always ends up at the short end of the stick later in life. Let’s do our best to put the dark days of W behind us and have some intelligent, enlightened leaders do what’s necessary to actually protect our interests rather than continuing our current weak, pathetic, and insipid “war on terror.”

Sent by Sean | 3:38 PM ET | 04-15-2008

So I wasn’t shy and didn’t pull any punches. Even though I suppose I could have taken a few minutes to compose a more proper argument, I still stand by what I wrote. Just when I start to regain some hope about the human condition, I read or hear this type of crap spewing out of some jackass’ mouth and my cynicism resurfaces.

As an inherently progressive species, it appears there are still those amongst us who want to divide us and hold humanity back for their own gain or sense of self worth. I will be writing a lot more about this and other political hot buttons in the coming weeks.

I will forever be optimistic, but it is certainly up to us to pave the way for change. I’m finding in my reading and discussions with other progressives that it is imperative we begin speaking out on our values and vision for America. That is the only way we can reclaim this nation from the grips of the insidious neocon spin machine.

Tags: american public diplomacy, diplomats, jihad, Kathy Fitzpatrick, nprnewsblog, quinnipiac university, saudi arabia, united arab emirates, united states information agency