(Karen) Hughes: Fixing U.S. image may take years ("maybe decades")

http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/politics/15631630.htm

Hughes: Fixing U.S. image may take years
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - It may take decades to change anti-American feelings around the world that have been aggravated by war in Iraq, U.S. policy toward Israel and America's "sex and violence" culture, the State Department official in charge of dealing with the U.S. image abroad said Thursday.

"The anti-Americanism, the concern around the world ... this ideological struggle, it's not going to change" quickly, Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's going to be the work of years and maybe decades."

Hughes, a longtime adviser to President Bush, has worked for more than a year to retool the way America sells itself overseas, but she acknowledged that success can be next to impossible to measure.

...

Hughes said the three-year-old Iraq war "is the latest excuse" for anti-American grievance in the Muslim world.

"A lot of the world did not agree with what we did in going into Iraq," just as there is long-standing disagreement with U.S. support for Israel, Hughes said.