Islamic Middle East Blog

From the Weekly Standard

09/19/2008

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/581isjam.asp

           The writer Joe Loconte first talks about a new World Public Opinion poll of 17 nations that was conducted between July 15 and August 31 involving over 16000 respondents. He believes that the poll revealed a significant support for the claim that the United States staged the 9/11 terrorist attacks–presumably for its own malicious and imperialistic designs.

            Loconte insists that the poll suggested how America’s European and NATO “allies” are “infested with legions of anti-American conspiracy theorists.” While a majority (57%) of the British blamed al Qaeda for the attacks, another 26 percent said they don’t know who the perpetrators were. Among Germans, nearly a fourth of all respondents blamed the United States.

            In Turkey, where according to Loconte anti-Americanism has spiked in recent years, 36 percent of respondents blame the United States for the attacks. In Indonesia, less than a fourth of all respondents think al Qaeda orchestrated 9/11, while the majority (57 percent) claims they have no idea.

            Loconte believes that the poll results also demonstrated the “insidious link” between anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism; about 43 percent of Egyptians believed that Israel engineered the attacks, and In Jordan, people who blamed Israel totally outnumbered those who blamed al-Qaeda.

            Loconte then talks about an anecdote, how he met with a group of Jordanian graduate students in Washington D.C. a year after 9/11 and although they were all very smart, professional, and politically informed, all of them unanimously believed that the Jews were behind the terrorist attacks. He calls Jordan “a nation churning out PhD candidates who cannot discern the difference between brute facts and fascist bile is a nation in the vice-grip of a social and spiritual disease.”

            Loconte says that a growing number of Muslim reformers are confessing how a widespread sense of failure among Muslims has produced a desperate search for scapegoats. He quotes Omran Salman of the Middle East Media Research Institute who said that “the distortion of the image of the United States has become a political objective for Arab governments in their struggle for survival, and a tool to banish the specter of democracy and change in the Arab region.”

            Loconte also finds the root of Anti-Americanism in mass media, that all seven European and Arab TV news outlets examined “negative coverage” of the United States far outweighed “positive coverage.”

            This article was more like an editorial, and I found it to be biased. The writer seems to have a very negative view on those who blame the United States with some reasoning. As he interprets a result of a poll, he does not keep himself from incorporating his personal views with the interpretation that is supposed to be balanced and neutral.