Heading Towards Disaster |
US policy in the Middle East has been so problematic because policymakers refuse to consider its impact on the Arab people. With Israel, it’s a different story. Over-attentiveness to Israeli concerns and a lack of sensitivity to Arab reaction to our actions have caused deep fractures between Arabs and the US and within the Arab world.
Since 2000, we’ve conducted over 50 multi-national opinion polls on a variety of topics, exploring Arab attitudes towards other Arabs, the US, China, Russia, Iran, and Israel, and towards conflicts in the region.
Our work indicates that US policies are clearly headed for disaster—not only for the US and its stated goals, but also, and more importantly, for the Arab people.
Some observations based on the trend lines from our surveys:
After 9/11, President Bush famously claimed, “They hate us because they hate our values.” Our 2002 polling found the opposite: Arabs liked American people, products, education, and values, but strongly disliked US policies towards the Arab world.
Bush’s Iraq war and neglect of Palestinians further lowered US ratings. They rose with Obama’s promise of change but fell when he didn’t deliver. Attitudes further plummeted with Trump’s pro-Israel, anti-Muslim policies.
By late 2023,........