One of the problems facing us is the type of warfare confronting us. Who exactly is the enemy? Our bombing only creates more terrorists or terrorist sympathizers. War truly is not the answer. No matter how much money we spend on trying to communicate our mission and intent with people in foreign lands nothing will change until we end our military occupation of these countries.

As a Canadian, I was deeply offended by the way Bush's first ambassador to Canada, Cellucci, tried to wheedle Canada into participating in Iraq by saying that, if Canada were invaded or threatened, the US would be there for us. Well, duh, naturally -- since every time Canada has been invaded or threatened by invasion in the past 250 years, it's been by the US. (Yes, the War of 1812 was a long time ago, but the RCMP and our first transcontinental railroad were both responses to the policy of Manifest Destiny. And in both world wars, you guys spent an uncomfortably long time deciding which side to be on. And the Cold War -- the missiles were going to be flying over Canada, both ways.)

Just having more intelligent people in the White House now will do more than billions spent on propaganda.

And delivering Dick Cheney and his colleagues to the Hague could earn the equivalent of an international standing ovation.

There are in my view three basic things that are important in earing positive PR:
1. What you do is more important than what you say
2. History matters
3. Culture/religion matters

Especially regarding 2) and 3), older cultures/nations have much longer memories than the United States. The people in those cultures/nations do not suffer from the short attention spans that afflicts Americans. They are not easily manipulated and spun by multi-billion-dollar propaganda. For example, in Afpak, the response of the Pashtun militants is informed by memories that goes back to Alexander the Great. They most certainly remember collectively the trauma of the indiscriminate bombings by British colonial troops and how the British divided to conquer and in the process marginalized those they classified as primitive/tribal (a term which unfortunately still spices discourse on Pakistan, especially). They react to U.S. actions (and words) in that light.

Comments are right on the money.
This is carved in stone: "Good advertising helps a poor product fail quicker."
We were attacked because of what Bush/Cheney (BC) planned to do overseas. We are not respected because we preach things like "rule of law" and "equality" but we don't apply the rule of law to "elites" and we don't allow equality to non-elites.
We can.
But, by analogy, giving Yugo the ad dollars of Chevrolet will not change things.