Posted 12/8/2002 1:48 PM

WASHINGTON — Once again, we have a poll taken overseas that tells us how much everyone abroad loathes the United States.

This time the survey comes from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press for its Global Attitudes Project.

Partly because Pew has a reputation for taking legitimate polls, and partly because the American news media seem to enjoy reporting what they see as errors in U.S. foreign policy, the findings got big play this past week.

* "World Image of U.S. Declines," said a headline in The Washington Post. * "World Survey Says Negative Views of U.S. Are Rising," said The New York Times. * The Associated Press sent its wire story to members under the header, "World Survey: America's Image Slipping." * And Reuters took a slightly different tack: "Iraq War Threat Seen Fueling Muslim Ire Worldwide."

All in all, no matter which report you read, the news was not good for the United States.

Poll leaders mostly attributed the negative attitudes to either anger at U.S. policy toward Iraq or failures by the Bush White House to take the views of other nations seriously in its approach to foreign policy.

Former Clinton administration Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who chaired the board overseeing the poll, put it this way: "The numbers actually show that we are out of step in terms of our thinking about how people see us versus the way people actually see us."

Perhaps. But if you had a copy of the poll report in front of you, and you didn't have to rely on the media to tell you what it said, you would have found that while negative opinions of the United States were on the rise in most nations, those holding them remain a distinct minority.

Residents of Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Britain, Poland, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Indonesia and Venezuela, among others, gave the United States a favorable rating of 60% or better.

And in emerging democracies formerly under Soviet dominance — the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Bulgaria — favorable views were held by 70% or more.

Moreover, those countries that gave the United States an overall negative rating were mostly Muslim countries. No surprise there.

And note this nugget from the survey that got no mention in news stories: "For all the French criticism of U.S. policies, America's image in France has not declined over the past two years."

But the report also spun that fact negatively: "Still, French ratings of the United States continue to be among the lowest in Europe."

How low is that? Sixty-three percent favorable, according to the poll.

So what's to fret about? Well, we may be the world's lone superpower, but we do need friends.

Much antipathy expressed toward the United States might stem from that superpower status and the fact that many see us as having much more in the way of economic success than the rest of the world. There is a certain envy factor.

Overseas worries about war with Iraq are dragging the ratings down, but not to the point where we should panic.

For all the negativity out there, America remains the promised land for immigrants the world over. More people immigrate here annually than to any other country. Our image may be declining overseas, but immigration is not.

In 2000, more than 850,000 citizens of other countries around the world migrated here. According to the census, more than 28 million U.S. residents — or one in 10 — were born in another country.

Asked if President Bush was troubled by the poll results, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer noted that many positive aspects of the survey were largely ignored by the media.

"This is one of the most stark examples of a poll whose data showed one thing and whose instant analysis showed another," he said.

He's got a point.

-- Anonymous, December 09, 2002

Answers

POLLING CATS ON DOGS

December 9, 2002 -- It seems America's war on terrorism isn't too popular in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim world.

This was the finding announced last week of a poll by Washington's Pew Center.

Really, the things people spend good money on.

Who would have imagined that much of the Arab and Muslim world hates America - and sympathizes with her terrorist enemies?

Earth to Pew: It wasn't the Seventh Day Adventists who hijacked planes to attack New York and Washington on 9/11 - having already bombed USS Cole, U.S. embassies in Africa, the Khobar Towers barracks and the World Trade Center back in 1993.

Nor have Zen Buddhist militants taken it on themselves to murder tourists in Bali and Kenya, assassinate missionaries in Lebanon and slaughter Christian worshippers in Pakistan and Hindu pilgrims in Kashmir.

Hmm. Just who made up those crowds that cheered in the streets when America's skyscrapers were brought down?

Quakers?

Still, this antipathy - and it's hard to know how widespread it really is, given that few, if any, anti-American Muslim societies are free enough to accommodate dissent - should not be taken to mean that America is in the wrong.

After all, the United States has done more than any other power to save Muslims from oppression, and worse, in places like Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

And anti-Americanism, like anti-Semitism, is simply a standard tool of corrupt tyrants in the Middle East and elsewhere, used to distract and manipulate their wretched, ignorant and often deeply bigoted populations.

Furthermore, given that much anti-Americanism is rooted in the resentment of a once-proud but now backward Islamic civilization against a progressive and prosperous West, there's not much that America can do about it.

Not that, in the end, it need try: America doesn't need to be loved by anybody.

It merely needs to make clear to those inclined to violence against U.S. interests or allies that the price of such conduct will be terrible to contemplate.

In his timeless guide to statecraft, "The Prince," Machiavelli noted that is "far safer to be feared than loved."

To hell with polls, in other words.

-- Anonymous, December 09, 2002