l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 By Patrick Goodenough
September 19, 2012
(CNSNews.com) – The first opinion poll to be conducted after last week’s
deadly attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya and a spate of anti-American
protests across the Muslim world has recorded a five-point drop in approval
for President Obama’s handling of foreign policy.
The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday found the president’s
foreign policy approval among registered voters at 49 percent, down from 54
percent one month earlier.
“The fall was steeper among independents, going from 53 percent in August
to 41 percent,” NBC reported.
Across 18 NBC/WSJ polls that have tracked the issue since April 2009, the
five-point drop is the second biggest recorded over a one-month period. (The
biggest – seven points – came in June 2011, following a record-high
approval bump the previous month which was likely linked to the killing of
Osama bin Laden.)
Obama’s 49 percent foreign policy approval rating this week is the second
lowest in the 18 polls. Only November 2010 was slightly lower – 48 percent
– possibly reflecting the national mood after the Democrats’ poor showing
in midterm elections, and/or a 10-day presidential trip to Asia not
generally viewed as successful.
The new poll recorded Obama’s foreign policy disapproval rate at 46 percent
, up from 40 since last month. That ties with the April 2011 result as the
highest disapproval rate for the president’s handling of foreign policy, as
measured by the 18 polls since shortly after he took office.
The poll did not directly seek respondents’ views on Republican candidate
Mitt Romney’s foreign policy competency. The question that came closest
asked whether Obama or Romney would make a better commander-in-chief;
respondents favored Obama by 45-38 percent.
The survey was conducted Sept. 12-16, in the days following the death of U.S
. ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other American personnel at
the hands of armed militants who launched a sustained assault on the
consulate in Benghazi.
That attack, coupled with ongoing, sometimes violent, protests at U.S.
embassies by Muslims purportedly angry over an online film mocking Mohammed,
focused attention onto an area that has not featured prominently in the
election campaign – U.S. foreign policy, particularly as it pertains to the
Middle East.
Issues generating discussion and debate include questions about security
precautions at U.S. missions in general and the Benghazi consulate in
particular; disagreements between U.S. and Libyan authorities over whether
the attack was pre-planned and what role – if any – was played by the
Mohammed film; unhappiness over the generously U.S.-funded Egyptian
government’s slow response to the breaching of the Cairo embassy compound;
the issue of whether U.S. foreign aid to Egypt and Libya should be suspended
; and more broadly, doubts about Obama’s outreach to Muslims and his
administration’s approach to the so-called “Arab spring.”
‘New beginning?’
While campaigning for the presidency Obama presented himself as someone
whose exotic background – an African Muslim father, boyhood years spent in
Indonesia – would play well in the international community.
“As somebody who myself lived overseas for a time, the world would see me
as a different kind of president, somebody who could see the world through
their eyes,” he told a Daily Telegraph reporter in early 2008.
Afghan students
“If I convened a meeting with Muslim leaders around the world to discuss
how they can align themselves against terrorism …,” he said, “I’d do so
with the credibility of someone who has lived in a Muslim country. All these
things can make a difference.”
After his election but before his inauguration, Obama indicated that he
wanted during his first 100 days in office deliver a major address in a key
Islamic capital aimed at improving America’s ties with the Muslim world.
He missed that goal, but on June 4, 2009 delivered that speech in Cairo,
calling for a “new beginning” in U.S.-Muslim relations after “years of
distrust.”
Despite Obama’s background and deliberate outreach to the Islamic world,
international opinion polls have not found an improvement in America’s
standing in the eyes of Muslims.
On a contrary, a major Pew Global Attitudes Project survey last June found
that in four key Muslim countries – Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon –
U.S. favorability ratings were even lower in 2012 than they were in 2008,
the last year of a Republican administration accused in some Muslim circles
of having “declared war on Islam” after 9/11.
Out of 14 countries included in the overall survey, only four were Muslim.
And those were the only four that produced lower scores under Obama than
under President Bush in 2008.
Similarly, a Zogby International poll in mid-2011 found that favorable views
of the U.S. had dropped by more than half in six Arab countries over two
years, from an average 33 percent in 2009 to 15 percent in 2011. The
countries were Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and
Saudi Arabia.
In Egypt, the Arab world’s most important country – and one that has
received more than $60 billion in U.S. aid over the past three decades –
poll results have been especially striking.
Obama’s handling of the Tahrir Square uprising early last year did not
generate any obvious improvement in Egyptians’ views of the U.S. According
to a Pew poll conducted two months after Hosni Mubarak’s departure, 79
percent of Egyptians viewed the U.S. in an unfavorable light – 10 percent
more than the 69 percent measured in 2006.
Only 22 percent of respondents in that poll approved of the Obama
administration’s approach to the uprising, while 39 percent said the
American response had been negative.
In an analysis Tuesday, Jonathan Eyal, senior research fellow at the Royal
United Services Institute in London, characterized Obama’s engagement as a
failure, arguing that the current anti-American protests have more to do
with U.S. foreign policy in the region than a reaction to the Mohammed film.
“All in all, the sad episode acts as a reminder of an American failure to
persuade Arab nations that America can be their friend or, at the very least
, is not their automatic foe,” he wrote |
|
