Anti-Americanism: Alive and Well in the Age of Obama

By Joseph LoconteWednesday, September 16, 2009

Filed under: World Watch, Numbers

Islamic countries distrust the United States under the leadership of President Obama about as much as they did under President George W. Bush. What's going on?

Throughout the Bush presidency, opinion polling from the Pew Research Center trumpeted America’s “abysmal” approval ratings across the globe. The problem, pollsters suggested with numbing regularity, was that a “cowboy president” had inflamed the Muslim world—and America’s European allies—with his “unilateral” war on terrorism. The remedy, of course, was a new administration with a fresh approach: a president committed to multilateralism, smart diplomacy, and American soft power. Right on cue, a Pew report hailed Barack Obama’s election for inspiring “global confidence” in U.S. leadership and rescuing America’s reputation from eternal perdition.

This hagiographic storyline, however, is evaporating like a morning mist. A newer Pew survey suggests that most Islamic countries distrust the United States under the leadership of President Obama about as much as they did under President George W. Bush. Yes, majorities of the Muslim populations interviewed still believe that America plays a mostly destructive role in the world. Most view the United States as “an enemy” and “a military threat” to their own country. Most disapprove of theAmerican-led effort to combat terrorism. Large numbers, in fact, voice strong support for terrorism and Osama bin Laden. Western Europeans, though expressing positive personal views of Obama, show little enthusiasm for key U.S. foreign policy objectives. In other words, anti-Americanism is alive and well in the age of Obama.

The most alarming poll finding, in view of Pakistan’s nuclear capability, is that more Pakistanis express positive views of Osama bin Laden than they do of President Obama.

The Pew poll, completed just after Obama’s Cairo speech to the Muslim world, drew on 27,000 interviews in 25 countries, including five Muslim-majority states. The desultory findings from Muslim respondents—reported by Pew researchers with a mix of confusion and rationalization—received scant attention from the mainstream media. No wonder: If the survey results represent attitudes in the Middle East and beyond, then the most cherished liberal assumptions about radical Islam and U.S. foreign policy are exposed as desperate falsehoods.

Perhaps the most fearsome example is Pakistan, where only about 16 percent of respondents express a positive view of the United States—a drop of three percentage points from when Bush was president. Thanks in part to terrorist attacks that have killed scores of ordinary Pakistanis, disapproval of terrorism and the Taliban has risen sharply in recent months. Nevertheless, most Pakistanis (64 percent) view the United States as an enemy. The most alarming finding, in view of Pakistan’s nuclear capability, is that more people express positive views of Osama bin Laden than they do of Obama. Let that soak in. Nearly one in five respondents (18 percent) trust bin Laden to “do the right thing” in world affairs, compared to 13 percent for Obama. Given Al Qaeda’s record of slaughtering Muslims as effortlessly as they do Western infidels, the Pakistani psyche seems headed for moral collapse.

Many people in Muslim-majority states believe the United States is playing a largely negative role in the world, according to a survey.

The situation in other Muslim lands looks nearly as grim. Echoing the Pew findings, a recent World Public Opinion survey suggests that many people in Muslim-majority states believe the United States is playing a largely negative role in the world (72 percent in Turkey say the United States is playing a mainly negative role, 69 percent in Pakistan, 67 percent in Egypt, 53 percent in Iraq, and 39 percent in Indonesia.) In Egypt, where America-bashing is virtually the only permissible form of public protest, high levels of anti-Americanism persist. Palestinians, by a more than two-to-one margin (51 percent to 23 percent), have more confidence in the leader of Al Qaeda than in President Obama. Obama gets higher approval ratings in Turkey—about 33 percent—but most respondents oppose his Afghanistan policy and express highly unfavorable attitudes toward the United States. Indeed, at least 86 percent of Turks say America abuses its power to get Turkey to do what it wants, and 76 percent see the United States as having a “hypocritical” agenda. This comes despite continuing U.S. support for Turkey’s admission to the European Union, assistance against terror attacks of the Kurdistan Workers Party, and an Obama trip in which he reassured Turks that America “is not, and never will be, at war with Islam.” A recent report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy has begun to grasp the essential reality: “Combined with historical data, these new polls show that anti-Americanism might be becoming an internalized component of Turkish society, and that anti-Americanism in Turkey does not relate to specific U.S. administrations.”