It isn't just Iraqis who prefer Kerry to Bush. In an online Al Jazeera poll, only 11.4% supported Bush (less than 5000 votes - which, pace Lee Smith, is by some measures "many"). But before conservatives leap on this as evidence that the bad guys want Kerry to win, 61% of the Al Jazeera survey said that there was no difference between the two candidates, while 27% supported Kerry.
Meanwhile, al Safir reports an Al Ahram Weekly survey of Egyptians which finds that 51% support Kerry and 12% Bush, while 32% would not vote (5% would vote for Nader). The survey isn't up on their website yet, but presumably will be soon.
As for what al Qaeda and other radical Islamists think, Daniel Benjamin, former director for counter-terrorism and author of The Age of Sacred Terror, noted this the other day: "To get a sense of the jihadist movement's state of mind, we must listen to its communications, and not just the operational "chatter" collected by the intelligence community. Today, the central forum for the terrorists' discourse is not covert phone communications but the Internet, where Islamist Web sites and chat rooms are filled with evaluations of current events, discussions of strategy and elaborations of jihadist ideology. Yes, assessing this material requires a critical eye since there is plenty of bluster and some chat room participants may be teenagers in American suburbs rather than fighters in the field. Some things, however, are clear: There has been a drastic shift in mood in the last two years. Radicals who were downcast and perplexed in 2002 about the rapid defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan now feel exuberant about the global situation and, above all, the events in Iraq."
So... the vast majority of ordinary Arabs, the ones on whom a coalition of moderation against terror must rely, either prefer Kerry or see no difference between the candidates.
Indeed, the only ones in the Arab world who seem to support Bush are the radicals of al Qaeda and the Saudi regime, which (like Vladimir Putin) understands what so many Bush supporters do not - that Bush's talk about democratic reform is fundamentally empty, while a Kerry victory might actually deliver on demands for democratic reform.
Do you think Kerry is willing to go to bat and derail 50 years of US policy of destabilization in the Middle East?
I'm going to vote for Kerry; by the same token, though, I can't see him doing that. Hell, Jimmy Carter gave everything away that wasn't nailed down (don't get me wrong - Mr. Carter is an awesome humanitarian and, I think, the only truly kind President we've had in 100 years, but kind != good) and he didn't manage to change our behavior in the Middle East.
Posted by: Steve | October 28, 2004 at 01:12 PM
More sad news, AA.
09:23 Iraqi TV reporter killed. Armed men have slain a popular Iraqi journalist for Sharqiya TV in Baghdad. Ms. Liqaa Abdul Razzaq is well-known newsreader who once worked for Iraqi state TV. She leaves behind a 6 year old son and a month-old infant. Ms. Razzaq was killed two months after the assassintion of her husband.
Posted by: Nur al-Cubicle | October 29, 2004 at 12:35 AM