Fatal Flaws

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

ANKARA, Turkey – Odd as it may seem, the annual release of the survey results of the Pew Global Attitudes Project has evolved into the American equivalent of the bloody Shia ritual of Ashura. During Ashura, devout Shiites commemorate the suffering and martyrdom of the grandson of Mohammed, Husayn, by flagellating themselves bloody with bladed chains.

For several consecutive years, the Pew study has disclosed that large majorities of foreign populations despise Americans, spurring international pundits to call for Americans to embrace a vigorous round of metaphorical self-flagellation, and for the Bush administration to seek penance by changing its policies.

Released June 13, this year’s Pew study had the new wrinkle of disclosing that many foreigners believe that the U.S. presence in Iraq is a greater threat to world peace than nuclear weapons in the hands of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmedinijad, of the infamous “Israel should be wiped off the map” and “the Holocaust didn’t happen” positions.

The study spurred the usual headlines: “America’s Image Tanking” (Orlando Sentinel) “Degrading America’s Image” The New York Times and International Herald Tribune “Global approval of US falls sharply, even among close allies” (Boston Globe).

An equally accurate headline might have been, “Poll Finds Poorly Informed Foreigners.” For example, in Pakistan, only 37% of respondents said they had even heard about the Iran nuclear dispute. The poll found the same number in China, and only 50% in India, 55% in Indonesia, 56% in Nigeria, 68% in Turkey and only 69% in Russia (!).

In light of that, is it terribly shocking that only 4% of Pakistanis think Iran’s nuclear program is a great danger to world peace?

Pew asked a separate question of whether a respondent supports or opposes Iran getting nuclear weapons. Pew – and numerous press accounts of the study’s results – noted that only 15% of Pakistani respondents oppose Iranian’s nuclear program, and 52% support it. But again, only 37% have heard that there’s controversy over Iranian nukes, so we can wonder how well-informed this opinion is.

Asked whether they think Iran’s nuclear program is a great danger to world peace, 22% of Chinese agree, as do 8% of Indians, 7% of Indonesians, 15% of Nigerians, 16% of Turks and 20% of Russians. Again, in all of these countries, vast chunks of the population have not heard that Iran’s nuclear program is controversial. It’s hard to conclude that something is a threat to world peace if you have never heard the objections to it.

The Pew Center didn’t ask respondents whether they had heard that the U.S. had invaded Iraq and that U.S. troops are still in that country; nearly four years after Saddam’s statue fell, it seems safe to assume that that this is widely known. America’s presence in Iraq was deemed by many foreign citizens to be a “great danger” to world peace, higher than Iran: 28% of Pakistanis, 31% of Chinese, 15% of Indians, 31% of Indonesians, 25% Nigerians, 60% of Turks, and 45% of Russians.

In many of these countries, the U.S. presence in Iraq receives saturation press coverage and it is overwhelmingly negative. Al-Jazeera, BBC, CNN International have been raked over the coals for their editorializing, but local news organizations overseas often make those international entities seem as staid as C-SPAN by comparison.

In Turkey, the highest-circulation papers portray the U.S. occupation of Iraq as endless harassment and abuse of Iraqis. Columnists eagerly repeat the farfetched speculation of Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker and Philip Giraldi in the American Conservative that American forces are readying a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Iranian targets.

By comparison, Iran’s nuclear program is described by Turkish politicians and columnists as merely a cause of “unease” and a reason for “concern.”

More than 140 members of Parliament (out of 550) are members of the “Iran-Turkey Parliamentary Friendship Group.” The Turkish foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, called Iran “a friend” and said Iran has been “rational and wise in its approach to the [nuclear] issue.”

All the Pew Center study really tells us is that the United States remains the universal scapegoat (perhaps competing with Israel for the title). If foreign officials, press, and publics are constantly stirring and venting rage at the U.S. over Iraq, there’s little rage left over for Chinese or Pakistani human rights abuses, Vladimir Putin’s autocratic power grabs, Indian, Nigerian or Indonesian poverty and corruption, or attempts by Turkey’s ruling party to undermine the nation’s secular character.

A veteran State Department official who has worked in Europe, Central and South America sees biased press coverage and propaganda as the driving force in anti-Americanism today.

“The purpose of modern public diplomacy in my opinion is not to win people over – but rather to counter the flood of negative information that I out there – Newsweek and the Koran issue being a case in point,” this official says. “Scratch an anti-American any where in the world and you will find that he or she has no idea of what America is doing in the world, other than what CNN, the BBC and al Jazeera tells him we are doing.”

Most press coverage of the Pew global survey begins and ends with the preconception that anti-American attitudes overseas represent a failure on the part of the U.S. – not on the part of the foreign populations themselves or their government-controlled press outlets. Those who ask and wail loudest “why do they hate us?” never bother to really look beyond our shores.

Mr. Geraghty writes the TKS blog on National Review Online. His first book, “Voting to Kill: How 9/11 Launched the Era of Republican Leadership,” will be published in September from Simon & Schuster.


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