Hey, remember that time when public diplomacy advocates were lavished with attention - to say nothing of the institutional credibility of publication - to come up with student exchanges as a way to win global hearts and minds? And remember when conservatives said that this was a typically muddled project filled with so much State Department incompetence at so many levels that it was guaranteed to fail? Hmm:

They came from around the world hoping to spend a high school year immersed in the culture and joys of America. Instead, five young foreign exchange students found themselves caught in a nightmare of neglect, malnourishment and abandonment by those supposed to protect them.

Now those five -- natives of countries stretching from Norway to Tanzania to Colombia -- are back home telling friends of a different America than they expected. And their brief visit reverberates in America as a United States senator demands accountability and reform, a Pennsylvania district attorney seeks criminal charges and the U.S. State Department concedes it failed to protect kids coming to America.

"We at the Department of State recognize [because we] are responsible for this program we have to make sure we are aggressively overseeing this program and make sure children are well-suited," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley.

On the plus side, I'm sure that this will turn out to be merely a poor implementation of a fundamentally sound idea. The alternative - that these kinds of "small but powerful" initiatives are bureaucratically unworkable sketches scribbled down by academics and embraced by diplomats who need to justify their existence - is just so unnuanced (h/t: MR reader BDH).

References:
* Student Exchanges Build Relations Between Countries [America.gov]
* The Political Psychology of Student Exchanges
* Exchange students live American nightmare [CNN]

Previously:
* Samantha "We Should Invade Israel" Power Appointed To NSC
* Which Egyptian TV Station Should Get An Obama Post-Speech Interview?
* Aww... Clinton Appoints Super-Special Globetrotting "Representative To Muslim Communities"