The State Department spent $15 million for a warm and fuzzy TV advertising campaign called "Shared Values" intended for broadcast in Muslim countries. The advertisements tried to depict religious tolerance here by giving brief profiles of thriving Muslims in the United States. Several Arab countries refused to run the ads, which were ultimately dropped after test audiences said they didn't touch on any of the main issues that divide America and the Muslim world.

• An Army unit in Iraq has been putting up posters with Saddam Hussein's face superimposed over the bodies of Elvis Presley, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Rita Hayworth and the rock star Billy Idol (who is adorned with a crucifix). Other than offending Muslims by depicting scantily clad women and Christian symbols, what does this campaign hope to achieve?

• The White House created an Office of Global Communications to counter hostile depictions of America in the foreign news media. The approach was to get military and civilian officials on the TV to rebut what they saw as inaccuracies on Al Jazeera and other satellite networks. But why complain about the unrestricted free press that is budding in the Middle East when you can embrace it, using it to tell America's story?

• The State Department has held a series of touchy-feely events in which "average" Americans — including one daughter of a United States senator — engage in video conferences with their Arab counterparts.

• The government is developing Web sites to influence people who happen to live in some of the least Internet-linked regions of the world.

• The State Department is spending $6 million to start a glossy, youth-oriented magazine called Hi; typical content is a celebrity profile of the Arab-American actor Tony Shalhoub. The magazine sells for as much as $2 in places with per capita incomes as low as $930 a year. While American officials are calling it a hit, newsstand owners in those countries say otherwise. "You can take the whole pile if you want," one vendor near American University in Cairo told a reporter for the weekly Al Ahram. "Nobody wants to buy it, anyway."

• In Afghanistan, the military dropped leaflets featuring the image of a clean-shaven Osama bin Laden in Western garb that read: "The murderer and coward has abandoned you." That the photo was so clearly doctored only enhanced the idea of America as a manipulative superpower, draining the goodwill and credibility needed for future diplomacy.

It is simply shocking that America, the country that invented modern advertising and marketing communications, has put together such a bewilderingly uncreative and counterproductive sales pitch. Is it any wonder that the Pew Foundation's latest polls of international attitudes find anti-Americanism a potent and growing force in the Muslim world?

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/04/opinion/04HOLT.html