From the New York Times:

Judith A. McHale was expecting a contentious session with Ansar Abbasi, a Pakistani journalist known for his harsh criticism of American foreign policy, when she sat down for a one-on-one meeting with him in a hotel conference room in Islamabad on Monday. She got that, and a little bit more.
After Ms. McHale, the Obama administration’s new under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, gave her initial polite presentation about building bridges between America and the Muslim world, Mr. Abbasi thanked her politely for meeting with him. Then he told her that he hated her.
“ ‘You should know that we hate all Americans,’ ” Ms. McHale said Mr. Abbasi told her. “ ‘From the bottom of our souls, we hate you.’ ” . . .
“He told me that we were no longer human beings because our goal was to eliminate other humans,” Ms. McHale said Wednesday, recounting the conversation with Mr. Abbasi. “He spoke English very well, and he said that thousands of innocent people have been killed because we are trying to find Osama bin Laden.”
Ms. McHale said she argued her points with Mr. Abbasi, points that to many Americans would appear logical, but that often fail to impress over here: Al Qaeda and Mr. bin Laden attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001; the war in Afghanistan, unlike the war in Iraq, is blessed by the United Nations and is a multinational effort; America will always do whatever it takes to defend itself.

Gary Schmitt comments over at the E.B.:

Holy cow, imagine the surprise for Secretary McHale to have discovered that the end of the Bush administration and the election of Barack Obama has not magically transformed relations with folks such as Abbasi. Maybe he just hadn’t gotten around to reading the president’s speech in Egypt this past June calling for a new era in Muslim-American relations. But somehow I don’t really think that’s the problem.
At least in this instance, the problem is McHale’s approach to “public diplomacy.” Basically, the undersecretary ceded the high ground to Abbasi, i.e., she leads with her chin, receives the predictable uppercut in response, and accepts that his hatred for us is a sufficient reason for us to have to try to defend ourselves to him. In brief, we place ourselves in his court room, so to speak. And her defense, the standard talking points, has the predictable effect—zilch. Obviously, he has no incentive to cede the high ground by accepting our defense—why should he?