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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE GWOT Year 4 - 2005
Arab opinions of US: good news and bad news by Tom Regan  #
posted November 16, 2005 at 11:00 a.m. Arab opinions of US: good news and bad news The good news is that favorable opinions are up, if still low; but other countries like China and India fare far better. By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com One-third of Moroccans, Jordanians, Lebanese, and Arabs in the United Arab Emirates now have favorable attitudes toward the United States, according to a six-nation poll conducted in October 2005 by Zogby International (ZI) and commissioned by the Arab American Institute (AAI). The AAI reported last week that the poll showed that favorable opinions of the US have returned to 2002 levels. Positive attitudes toward the US rebounded from their 2004 levels, when they plunged to new lows, largely in response to the US invasion of Iraq. The pollsters talked to 3,600 Arabs in Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, and Jordan. While positive ratings were up in all of the six countries surveyed, more than two-thirds of those polled still hold a negative view of the US. This is particularly true in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where favorable ratings were much lower than in the other countries. The Zogby poll indicated that American foreign policy remains the main cause of negative ratings, "especially the war in Iraq and the American treatment of Arabs and Muslims." The administration's push for democracy did not seem to be much of a factor in creating a favorable impression of the United States. In Egypt, only 4% indicated that the 'Bush Administration's promotion of democracy determined their attitudes toward the US,' with most of them reporting that this effort soured their attitude toward the US. In Saudi Arabia, of the 9% who were impacted by the Administration's advocacy for democratic reform, only one-third of this group said they reacted positively to this US effort. This result echoes another finding from an AAI/ZI poll in 2004 which showed that most Arabs did not want US involvement in their domestic politics. The poll showed that the Bush administration's push for democracy in the Middle East was most favorably received by Lebanese Christians (57 percent in favor to 39 percent opposed). When asked by pollsters what determined their opinion towards the US, an overwhelming number of people said the Iraq war: 57 percent in Egypt, 49 percent in Saudi Arabia, while Morocco and Jordan were in the mid-40s. Surprisingly, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was named by only a relatively small number of those surveyed as the most important factor, which may reflect recent positive trends in that conflict. The poll also produced another finding that may have long term implications for US policy in the region: China, India, and Russia scored higher positive ratings than the US. China was viewed favorably by a large number of those surveyed, particularly in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Lebanon. Russia fared less well than China and India; its high scores were in Jordan and Morocco. The Tufts Daily reports that in a speech given to students at Tufts University in Boston on Wednesday night, James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute and brother of John Zogby, head of Zogby International, said that despite the amount of exchange between the Arab World and the West, "we are ignorant to what's going on." He compared the attitudes of most Americans before the war in Iraq began as similar to the one in colonial Britain, with Arabs taking on the role as "helpless savages." Zogby said that "increased understanding is the first step towards improving relations with the Arab World." Meanwhile, Zogby International also polled the same six countries (Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, and Jordan) for the World Economic Forum's Arab Business Council and found that those surveyed hold different views on "how a democratically chosen Islamic administration would behave." More than 70 per cent of respondents in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates would trust a popularly elected Islamic government to abide by the rules of a democracy. Morocco is next on the list of confidence with 46 per cent, followed by Egypt with 44 per cent, Jordan with 39 per cent, and Lebanon with 36 per cent. The poll, which also looked at education, business, and the importance of Sharia law, was presented at the recent meeting of the Arab Business Council in Bahrain. |