...How do frustrated Iraqis and Arabs make sense of "this" Democratic alternative?
Large majorities of Arabs want US troops to leave Iraq sooner rather than later. According to a recent survey conducted between late February and early March in five pro-US Arab countries, namely Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Lebanon, and released in Washington DC on March 28 by the Arab American Institute (AAI) and Zogby International, a polling firm, 68 per cent of Saudi respondents said they considered Washington's influence in Iraq as negative, 83 per cent in Egypt, 96 per cent in Jordan. Earlier two surveys in late November and early December conducted by Zogby International in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco found not only that Washington's standing in the Arab world had hit rock bottom, but also that Iran was the principal beneficiary.
Nearly three out of every four respondents in Egypt and Jordan said they favoured an immediate withdrawal of US troops, while large pluralities in the other three countries favoured that option over withdrawal only after Iraq's unity and stability are assured, maintaining current US troop strength, or increasing it, as the Bush administration is currently doing. Indeed, support for the latter two options was less than 10 per cent in every country except Saudi Arabia. In addition, 47 per cent of Jordanian and 38 per cent of Egyptian respondents said they worried more about the prospect of a permanent US occupation of Iraq than about its partition, the spread of its civil war, or about the strengthening of Iran.
Similarly, 57 per cent of Americans support a withdrawal from Iraq according to a recent Newsweek poll. The findings from the Pew Research Center earlier this week said 59 per cent of Americans supported a withdrawal deadline. The Democrats rode to power last November on the public's discontent with the war in Iraq.
The growing public opposition in the United States to the war, the Democrats' electoral victory on an exit platform, which led them to the control of the Congress, and the American debate on the deadlines for exiting Iraq are all indeed public knowledge in Iraq as well as in Arab countries. However the Democratic "alternative" has yet to make its impact felt in a way that could improve the US image among Arabs and potentially this "alternative" will blacken that image further if and when it receives more scrutiny....
