State Dept. Blog Silent on Zawahiri Slur
It seems I’m not the only one who finds it odd that the State Dept.’s blog DipNote isn’t promoting the Zawahiri “house negro” tape to discredit Al Qaeda. Matt Armstrong, proprietor of the excellent counterinsurgency/public diplomacy blog MountainRunner, has this particular shard of popcorn-kernel stuck in his teeth as well:
“„DipNote and America.gov should be one of the many platforms used to post accessible responses. Reposting the above is out of the question, but at a minimum a short response echoing or linking to Spencer is better than silence and would get traction.
“„State’s foreign media hubs are one thing, but what about online? I’ll wager Defense has already started to respond to this the Zawahiri message on the Internet. State needs to respond both to U.S. audiences (ostensibly DipNote’s mission) and abroad (America.gov’s mission). Seriously, even China is implementing an agile response capability.
You hear that, Foggy Bottom? The Chinese are better equipped to exploit an enemy’s communications mistakes. One hopes reversing this trend can be a feature of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate confirmation hearings.
