Karen Hughes, a longstanding adviser to President George W. Bush, this week won the support of the Senate foreign relations committee for her new role as head of US public diplomacy. Her job: winning the global battle of ideas against anti-Americanism and militant jihad. On the same day, at the urging of the White House, Republican leaders in the Senate shelved a defence bill in part to prevent amendments that would enshrine in law basic rights of detainees in the war on terror. Has no one noticed the contradiction between these two events?

The US certainly needs to revamp its public diplomacy. The war on terror will ultimately be won not on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, but in the hearts and minds of the Muslim world. The existing communications effort is absurdly weak for the nation that invented public relations. Ms Hughes can contribute much by shaking up the bureaucracy and providing strong leadership. But it will all be for nothing if the US keeps handing the jihadists successive propaganda coups.