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I’m surprised I haven’t seen any comment on the Corner from Michael Barone’s piece over at Real Clear Politics. Here’s one excerpt that is a hell of a thing:
George W. Bush has proclaimed that we are working to build democracy in Iraq not just for Iraqis, but in order to advance freedom and defeat fanatical Islamist terrorism around the world. Now comes the Pew Global Attitudes Project’s recent survey of opinion in six Muslim countries to tell us that progress is being made in achieving that goal.
Minds are being changed, and in the right direction.
Most importantly, support for terrorism in defense of Islam has “declined dramatically,” in the Pew report’s words, in Muslim countries, except in Jordan (which has a Palestinian majority) and Turkey, where support has remained a low 14 percent. It has fallen in Indonesia (from 27 percent to 15 percent since 2002), Pakistan (from 41 percent to 25 percent since 2004) and Morocco (from 40 percent to 13 percent since 2004), and among Muslims in Lebanon (from 73 percent to 26 percent since 2002).
Next time someone tells me that Bush has made us hated the world over, and especially in the Middle East, I know what I’m saying. Perhaps they do hate us more now than they did during the Clinton years (I doubt it), but I’ll take that any day to when 73 percent of Lebanese were ready and willing to kill any number of us…even if they did like us a little more in those days.
Here’s the whole thing.