Losing the War of Ideas

In a two part series, the WaPo (I'm linking to the MSNBC repeater) looked at how the Bush Administration and al Qaeda have sought to get their message out to the Middle East.

The clear conclusion: The Bush Administration, so far, has clearly lost the battle of ideas.

That is not just my conclusion: "It is just plain embarrassing that al-Qaeda is better at communicating its message on the Internet than America," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said.

There are a lot of reasons why this is happening, but they all boil down to one overarching reason: The stunning incompetence of the Bush Administration. Read the article about how they have fucked up running a cable TV network, doing stupid shit such as broadcasting Christian messages to a Muslim audience and doing the ultimate sin for television: Being boring as shit.