So not only is our public diplomacy a failure...

...our actual policy of supporting democratic activists seems be defunct as well. Dammit.

Hosni Mubarak has been pretty damn good at defanging what looked like a burgeoning pro-democracy movement in Egypt. Not only has Sa‘ad ed-Din Ibrahim been made an example of (as described above), but they've basically ousted the real democrats from the Kifaya (Enough!) movement and put in puppets. (Can't find the article I read on that. Will keep looking)