March 17, 2004

CAN'T BUY THEIR LOVE (via ef brown):

Poll Finds Hostility Hardening Toward U.S. Policies (SUSAN SACHS, 3/17/04, NY Times)

In some predominantly Muslim countries, where negative attitudes toward American policy have prevailed for years, disapproval of the United States persisted over the past year, although at a less intense level that Mr. Kohut described as anger rather than hatred.

Still, the survey found, people in Jordan, Pakistan and Morocco tended to view other outsiders with almost the same degree of ill will and distrust as they did the United States. Opinions about the European Union and the United Nations were generally unfavorable or ambivalent at best, a sharp contrast to opinion in Europe and Russia where attitudes toward those institutions were positive. [...]

Turkish attitudes toward the United States improved during the past year, possibly a reflection of satisfaction that post-war Iraq has not descended into a civil war that might threaten or destabilize Turkey. This year, 30 percent of Turks rated the United States favorably, compared with 12 percent last year.


Europe's not going to get on their good side by getting on our bad.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 17, 2004 1:32 PM
Comments

Maybe the Turks are looking in the wrong place.

If it's true that Kurds in Iran are burning cities, the Turks need to worry.

And I'm surprised you haven't referred to it. Maybe that's the spark that puts the Iranian government in play.

Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 17, 2004 1:54 PM

Hey, come poll me and see if I have any hardening hostility toward Arabs and Muslims. The answer is yes! I'm approaching the "angry all the time" feeling I had after 9/11.

Posted by: Kay at March 17, 2004 3:01 PM

This is a poll by the "Pew Research Center for the People" -- and according to today's Atlanta Journal Constitution, Madelaine Albright oversaw it.

Doesn't mean it's wrong, just interesting to know.

Posted by: Twn at March 17, 2004 3:21 PM

Muslims don't like us. Oh Dear me. I am so up set. What will we ever do? I was so hopping they would like us.

Posted by: Robert Schwartz at March 17, 2004 6:21 PM

Do these people like anybody?

Posted by: Rick T. at March 17, 2004 6:45 PM

Sort of like Douglas Adams' Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax:

".. an insanely aggressive race of people who lived around twenty billion years ago, when the Galaxy was young and fresh, and every idea worth fighting for was a new one. And fighting was what the Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax were good at, and being good at it, they did it a lot. They fought their enemies (i.e. everybody else), they fought each other. Their planet was a complete wreck..

"The best way to pick a fight with a Silastic Armorfiend of Striterax was just to be born. They didn't like it, they got resentful. And when an Armorfiend got resentful, someone got hurt. An exhausting way of life, one might think, but they did seem to have an awful lot of energy. The best way of dealing with a Silastic Armorfiend of Striterax was to put him in a room on his own, because sooner or later he would simply beat himself up..."

Posted by: Gideon at March 17, 2004 9:47 PM

I wonder how Muhammar Kaddafi answered the poll.

Posted by: Robert Duquette at March 17, 2004 10:35 PM

Kaddafi has no reason to be upset, and plenty of reasons to be happy.

He no longer has to support an expensive WMD programme, one that had modest results, at best, and now American companies can invest in Libya's oil industries, which sorely need it.
As I understand it, Libya's oil infrastructure is in better shape than Iraq's was, but just barely.

Posted by: Michael Herdegen at March 18, 2004 5:55 AM

I would love to see immigration rates correlated with these polls. These people hate us so much, but they can't wait to move here and enjoy our political freedoms and free markets. That is historically the biggest hypocrisy with theocratic Islam..enjoy the West, buy their products, move their because their home is a dump, but complain about your upward mobility the whole time

Posted by: tim belknap at March 18, 2004 7:48 AM

Yeah, yeah, they still hate us.

What I want to know is do they *fear* us yet?

Posted by: ralph phelan at March 18, 2004 11:46 AM
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