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Reuters reports: “The State Department’s public diplomacy chief and image guru, Karen Hughes, has decided to resign, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.” More here.

Given her abject dhimmi tendencies, this is a good thing. DLTDHYOTWO.

Via USA Today, self-delusion reigns at Foggy Bottom:

“She’s made it possible for every ambassador around the world to feel comfortable going out and talking about America’s message, pressing the public diplomacy case,” Condoleezza Rice tells reporters.

Hughes, a former TV reporter, says she’s proud of her accomplishments. “I feel that I’ve done what Secretary Rice and President Bush asked me to do, by transforming public diplomacy and making it a national security priority central to everything we do in government, while also engaging the private sector more extensively than ever before,” she says.

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Flashback via Robert Spencer:

Well, this explains a great deal. State Department diplomat extraordinaire Karen Hughes has been studying Islam via the notorious Saudi-funded dhimmi “scholar” and Islamic apologist John Esposito and Reza Aslan, the wunderkind who assures us that Muhammad was the ideal Rotarian and the jihad against the West is just a myth.

Flashback via Diana West:

Karen Hughes, stay home.

The president’s confidante has been on a “listening tour” to “start a conversation with the rest of the world” — namely, the Muslim world, beginning with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — but there were too many times when she just didn’t know what to say.

A Washington Post anecdote from day one captures the disconnect. Asked in Egypt whether she was going to meet with the Muslim Brotherhood, the opposition party banned by Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak with deep roots in terrorism and a catchy motto (“Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope”), Hughes “turned to an aide and indicated she was not sure of the answer. The aide whispered back, and Hughes replied, ‘We are respectful of Egypt’s laws.’”

I guess that means no, but the non-denial denial is open to interpretation. Maybe she wanted to meet with the Muslim Brotherhood, but couldn’t. Or maybe she didn’t want to say something as harshly non-conversational as “no” because the popular MB might be elected one of these days. Or maybe she just didn’t know.

But worse than not knowing what to say is saying too much. Or saying the wrong thing. Or even saying anything at all. Hughes committed all of the above, a faux-pas trifecta, after meeting with Sheikh Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, the academic center of Sunni Islam. It was a “wonderful meeting,” she explained, because the two of them were able to talk “about the common language of the heart.”

Oh, brother. Is this an Under Secretary of State or a sorority sister? Hughes burbled on about the leadership of Al-Azhar “in speaking out against extremism, against terrorism, (which) is not in keeping with the tenets of Islam” — natch. The sheikh “made the point that all divine religions are built on a spirit of love,” she said, “and (that) it is important that all of us work together to fight extremism, to fight terrorism.”

What a guy. Hearing Hughes talk about Sheikh Tantawi, you could almost forget what he said in 2002, as translated from a report by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), when he called on Palestinian Muslims to “intensify the martyrdom operations against the Zionist enemy” — men, women and children — and described the barbarous slaughter as “the highest form of Jihad operations” and “a legitimate act according to (Islamic) law.” Maybe that’s the “spirit of love” Hughes was gushing about.

Flashback via Militant Islam Monitor: White House rep Karen Hughes: I found “new allies” at radical Islamist ISNA convention ” to help educate America” about Muslims