Part 3

All one has to do to confirm these statistics is to turn to polls that have been conducted in the past few years in the Arab Middle East and in Muslim countries. In March 2002, a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll of 10,000 people in nine Muslim countries found that a majority of people from Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, had unfavorable views of the United States. Another important set of polls were conducted by John Zogby, a respected American pollster who has been conducting polls since 1984. Zogby International has published many extensive polls over the years of Arab attitudes toward the United States. In June 2004, more than a year into the invasion of Iraq, Zogby International published “Impressions of America,” a poll of the attitude towards Americans of six Arab nations and it stated that 69% of Lebanese, 73% of Emiraties, 78% of Jordanians, 98% of Egyptians, 88% of Moroccans, and 94% of Saudis had unfavorable views of the United States. These numbers were staggering especially considering that they were a considerable hike from a similar poll taken in June of 2002, ten months before the start of the Iraqi war. This gives us a glimpse into what really affects Arab popular opinion, namely foreign policy.