Arab World Remains Hostile, Fearful Toward US

Basti Note: I was looking over some old material from my forum and found this article. This is from December 3, 2005, a year and a half ago and it is still timely. Nations like individual people should not be engaged in a popularity contest, its not worth the trouble and expense.

Arab World Remains Hostile, Fearful Toward US

by Jim Lobe
While the past 15 months have brought a slight decline in anti-U.S. sentiment, public opinion in the Arab world about Washington's policies and intentions in the Middle East remains overwhelmingly negative and deeply skeptical, according to a major new survey released here Friday.

Most Arabs continue to believe the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq has harmed prospects for both stability and democratic development in the region, as well as the welfare of Iraqis themselves, according to survey's designer, Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development Studies at the University of Maryland and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

"Iraq has become the new prism of pain through which Arabs are looking at the U.S. and the world," he said, noting that 80 percent of respondents said they based their views on U.S. "policies," rather than U.S. or Western "values" or way of life.

The survey, the third in an annual series overseen by the polling firm Zogby International, was based on interviews with a total of 3,900 people in Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates in the latter half of October. The results of a second survey conducted by Zogby at the same time are scheduled to be released by the Arab American Institute next week.

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http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=8205

"Arab World Remains Hostile, Fearful Toward US"

And this is a problem, how?

A lot of people in this country are obsessed with having other people like America at any cost. I don't give a shit if any foreigners like the US. I fail to see how being liked is a viable foreign policy. Fear is better, having the rags fear the US is good policy.