In war's wake, hostility and mistrust towards US

Meg Bortin of IHT reports that, according to the results of the Pew Center's recent "Views of a Changing World 2003" poll, the "war in Iraq has widened the rift between the United States and the rest of the world, with a steep plunge in Americans' views of their traditional allies and a further surge of anti-Americanism in Muslim countries."

The poll of more than 15,000 people in 20 countries and the Palestinian Authority, conducted in May by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center...forcefully supported the finding of an earlier survey that a U.S. war with Iraq would fuel anti-American sentiment.

As could be expected, this feeling is strongest in the Muslim world, where negative attitudes toward the United States have soared since the war on Iraq began March 20 with a wave of American air attacks over Baghdad.

One of the most extreme shifts was seen in Turkey, where the government, heeding popular sentiment, decided not to allow United States to use its soil as a base for attacks on Iraq although Washington and Ankara are partners in NATO.

The poll found that 83 percent of Turks now have an unfavorable opinion of the United States, up from 55 percent last summer.

...In fact, feelings are so intense in the Islamic world that Osama bin Laden was chosen by five Muslim publics - in Indonesia, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and the Palestinian Authority - as one of the three political leaders they would most trust to "do the right thing" in world affairs.

Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, said he had been surprised by the extent to which "the bottom has fallen out" in the Muslim world.

"Anti-Americanism has deepened, but it has also widened," he said. "You now find it in the far reaches of Africa - in Nigeria, among Muslims - and in Indonesia. People see America as a real threat. They think we're going to invade them."

It goes without saying that what is indicated above is precisely what critics of the war in Iraq warned.

Update: A close look at the Pew Report indicates that the figures Bortin cites on Turkey are a bit out of whack.

Someone in a comment to the corresponding post at American Samizdat caught the misquote.

It turns out that while support for the US in Turkey has decreased over the past year, it's increased since March (from 12-15%).

A chart on page 19 of the report also indicates that 30% of respondents had a "favorable view of the US" last summer, down from 52% in 1999/2000.

I'm not quite sure where Bortin got her figures...