I'm wondering if this sort of thing bothers anyone here. I mean sure, we can always just kill 'em all, but just think what it will cost...
iht.com
More than half the Pakistanis polled now believe that "suicide bombings against Americans and other Westerners in Iraq are justifiable". 65% have a positive opinion of Osama bin Laden.
Pakistan has 30 or so nuclear weapons and a very vulnerable government.
I'm very glad that the removal of Saddam has made the world safer.
I just don't feel very safe.
The great deficiency of this article, and a very revealing one it is, is that they polled Europe and the Arab world, but apparently not the non-Western democracies. Opinion shifts there would have been revealing. The US can live without Europe. What many Americans don't realize is that they are on the vberge of isolating themselves from the entire free world. That's a bit more complicated.
We should not confuse the support of Governments, many of which are granting it at the point of an economic gun, with the support of populations. Coerced allies are not reliable allies. Neither should we confuse neutrality adopted out of fear with surrender. A lot of the people who are pretending to kowtow in submission to our military force will stab us in the back at the first opportunity.
'No healing of the wounds' a year after Iraq war, global survey finds
PARIS One year after the war in Iraq, European distrust of the United States has intensified, with sharp doubts among America's closest allies of the Bush administration's motives in the war on terror, a global opinion survey has found.
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The poll of more than 7,500 people in nine countries, conducted in late February and early March by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, before the bombings in Spain, showed that anger toward America is still fierce in Muslim countries, too, 12 months after the war began.
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Resentment is so strong that majorities in three Muslim countries surveyed - Jordan, Pakistan and Morocco - feel that suicide bombings against Americans and other Westerners in Iraq are justifiable.
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The poll, carried out in association with the International Herald Tribune, found that even in Turkey, an American partner in NATO, 31 percent felt such attacks were justifiable.
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Still more worrisome perhaps for Washington in an election year, however, the trans-Atlantic confidence gap has deepened since a Pew survey carried out in the immediate aftermath of the war, when public ire over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was still hot in Europe.
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"There has been no healing of the wounds," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center in Washington.
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Unfavorable opinion of the United States, which skyrocketed in the run-up to the war, has become still more negative in France, Germany and Britain since President George W. Bush declared hostilities over in May, the survey found.
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British views in particular are more critical, with a 12 percent slide in favorable opinion of the United States. The decrease, from 70 percent last May to 58 percent now, "reflects dropping support for the war" in Britain, Kohut said.
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In France, favorable views dropped to 37 percent from 43 percent in May; in Germany positive opinion fell to 38 percent from 45 percent 10 months ago.
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Majorities in the three countries - historically Washington's closest NATO partners - also said that as a consequence of the war they had less confidence that the United States is trustworthy. Mistrust was expressed by 82 percent in Germany, 78 percent in France and 58 percent in Britain.
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According to François Heisbourg, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris, alienation is increasing in Europe "because there's been no give on the Bush side."
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"There is a widespread perception in Europe that we have the choice of being treated as a vassal - a poodle in the case of Britain - or being treated as an antagonist," Heisbourg said.
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As grounds for resentment, he cited continuing American neglect of European sentiment on issues ranging from the Kyoto Protocol on the environment to the treatment of prisoners at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In France, he noted, anger flared anew recently when the State Department came out against the banning of the Islamic head scarf in French schools.
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The survey results also indicate that there has been no rebound among America's allies of post-Sept. 11 sympathy for the United States, which dissipated in the glare of European disapproval during the build-up to war.
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Quite the contrary: Majorities in France, Germany, Russia, Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan and Morocco said they thought the U.S.-led war on terrorism was not sincere. Instead, most said it was an effort "to control Mideast oil" or "to dominate the world." Even in Britain only the slimmest majority - 51 percent - viewed the war on terror as sincere.
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In fact, people in many countries were dismissive of U.S. attitudes toward the threat of international terrorism.
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While fully 84 percent of Americans questioned said the United States was right to be concerned, majorities in France and the four Muslim countries in the survey - Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan and Morocco - said America was overreacting.
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Kohut said the survey results might have differed had the question been asked after the March 11 carnage in Spain.
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William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard and a strong supporter of the war on terrorism, said the Madrid attacks "could even widen the rift."
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Kristol cited remarks this week by Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, that the U.S. approach to fighting terrorism had failed, and added: "If that's going to be the European conclusion of the past two and a half years, I think Americans, and not just Bush, are going to reject that."
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In foreign policy in general, the view that the United States acts unilaterally is more widespread now than at the war's end, the survey found.
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In France, 84 percent said they felt the United States did not take their country's interests into account in international policy decisions, up from 76 percent last May. Similar strong feelings were expressed in Turkey (79 percent), Jordan (77 percent), Russia (73 percent), and Germany (69 percent).
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In contrast, 70 percent of Americans surveyed felt that the United States takes other countries' interests into account.
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"Americans think we're cooperative and popular," Kohut said of the perception gap. "Americans think, 'We're the ones on the white horse who do good things for the planet, like dealing with terrorism and evil dictators, and we're misunderstood.'"
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The trans-Atlantic chasm in thinking translated into desire in Europe for looser ties with the United States in security and diplomatic affairs, the survey found. Majorities in France (75 percent), Germany (63 percent), Turkey (60 percent) and Britain (56 percent) said Europe should be more independent.
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Majorities in the five European countries in the survey - Britain, France, Germany, Russia and Turkey - said it would be a good thing if the European Union became as powerful as the United States. In France, 90 percent expressed this view.
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European dislike of President George W. Bush, too, has not diminished. Majorities in every country surveyed expressed unfavorable views, with negative opinion of Bush in France and Germany - 85 percent - higher than in Muslim countries like Pakistan and Turkey.
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"I think what has hurt Bush the most, both in Europe and the United States, is his failure to explain why no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq," Kristol said. "We're paying a real price for that."
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Most people questioned in the survey said they felt that Bush and Tony Blair, the British prime minister, had lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to have a pretext for war.
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Only in the United States and Britain did a majority say their leaders had been misinformed by bad intelligence, and even there sizable minorities said the two leaders had lied: 31 percent in the United States and 41 percent in Britain.
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Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden is still viewed as a hero in parts of the Muslim world. Sixty-five percent in Pakistan and 55 percent in Jordan expressed favorable views of the Qaeda leader. In Turkey, however, 75 percent expressed unfavorable views.
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As for American attitudes, the anger felt toward the "coalition of the unwilling" - notably France and Germany - has subsided slightly since the war's end, but is still strong.
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Thirty-three percent in the United States now express favorable views of France, up from 29 percent in May; 50 percent hold positive views of Germany, up from 44 percent. Enthusiasm for Britain is declining, however, with 73 percent now holding favorable views, down from 82 percent in May.
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Given the intense media coverage of the Iraq war and the resulting tensions between the United States and Europe, another surprising finding is that 7 percent of Americans surveyed have never heard of the European Union. That figure, however, is an improvement since early September 2001, when one-fifth of Americans surveyed - 20 percent - said they had never heard of the allied bloc across the Atlantic.
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