After enjoying a good run in the 1980s and 1990s, democracy has been playing defense lately. Dictators have grown wise to people power. China, Russia, Iran and Cuba have been more successful exporting and extolling their systems than democracies have been in promoting theirs.

A Pakistani delegation consisting of nine professionals, who have achieved distinction in their respective fields and are on a visit to the US since October 1, will visit the US State Department, which has arranged special briefings for them with its Public Diplomacy wing. The delegation is visiting the US at the invitation of the Rotary Club (RC) of Wilmington, Delaware.

I wrote last week... "The U.S. military has been working hard to provide flood assistance, but most of that is invisible to Pakistanis," I noted. That seemed to me to be a missed opportunity -- and characteristic of a weird misfire in U.S. public diplomacy. For a superpower, we can be oddly shy about advertising our good works.

Supported by NTM-A advisors, Afghan forces have established a basic, but rapidly growing, communication capability. During the course of the last twelve months they have more than tripled their number of trained Public Affairs Officers - from fifty-five to over two hundred...

Conveying information and selling a positive image is often best accomplished by private citizens; today, the soft sell may prove more effective than the hard sell. The main strength of the government broadcasting and mass media approach to public diplomacy is its audience reach and ability to generate public awareness and set the agenda

Today's ugly Islamophobia painfully recalls the bigotries of earlier times. Now, as then, "culture wars" are energized less by what is known about the other than by what is not known or not understood.

Beyond the harsh rhetoric on who is to blame for 9/11, this appearance on BBC Persian has a few notable implications for U.S. public diplomacy apparatus in general and its policy towards Iran in particular.