Much has been made of the willingness of a few countries, other than the UK, to support Bush’s fanatical thirst for war with Iraq. A new Ipsos-Reid poll (http://www.ipsos-reid.com/media/dsp_displaypr_cdn.cfm?id_to_view=1732), based on interviews in 14 countries in November and December, now suggests that if the people, rather than their governments, had their say, international support for US policy might be almost non-existent. Here are the data:
Should your country’s leaders be more or less supportive of America’s policies?
| COUNTRY | More | Less | Same as Now |
Don’t Know |
| Argentina | 14 | 63 | 8 | 15 |
| Brazil | 18 | 70 | 5 | 7 |
| Canada | 37 | 48 | 10 | 5 |
| Columbia | 51 | 41 | 2 | 6 |
| Mexico | 23 | 61 | 15 | 2 |
| France | 15 | 68 | 4 | 13 |
| Germany | 28 | 53 | 12 | 7 |
| Poland | 20 | 52 | 10 | 18 |
| UK | 20 | 63 | 13 | 5 |
| Japan | 25 | 40 | 29 | 6 |
| Philippines | 43 | 42 | 6 | 10 |
| Thailand | 35 | 40 | 14 | 11 |
| South Africa | 35 | 35 | 8 | 22 |
| Turkey | 20 | 57 | 8 | 15 |
A more recent Canadian poll shows citizens have hardened their opposition considerably to war with Iraq since the above poll was taken, so the above numbers probably understate if anything just how broad opposition to war is around the globe.
ROFL. Okay, let’s take selected numbers from a months-old poll, pull out some subjective conclusions and end up with… “almost non-existant” and “probably understate if anything”???? My god.
I do say “might” and “probably”, though if I were so inclined I think I could pull together enough data, including this week’s polls from the UK and US, to support my hypotheses. At least I acknowledge them as hypotheses, which is more than Fleischer & Powell do when they spin aerial photos of inspected Iraqi sites and 12 year old university theses as “irrefutable evidence” and “facts” in support of their allegations that Iraq “indisputably” has WMD.
Dude! 68% of French think their government should support us less than it already does? Merde! What’s next, are they going to invade NY, or start flying Airbusses into the Sears Tower? Let’s ask them again a year from now, and see how they twist things into I-told-you-so. Sacre bleu!
I am always amazed why some should think we need to trouble ourselves with what other nations feel about us. If we were to follow what other nations think we should do, we would really be in an econimical decline. These nations are looking out for themselves. We need to worry less about being popular and do the same-take care of us.