America is coming dangerously close

Clemons approvingly quotes Hagel:

"I believe America is coming dangerously close to isolating itself in the Muslim world.

If we continue to lose our political capital with the Muslim world, we will lose our credibility, trust and ability to lead a renewed Middle East peace process and see a further erosion in East-West relations. We may be on a very precipitous course toward an East-West collision.

A Judeo-Christian/Muslim split would inflame the world. In 2005, Gallup conducted a poll in ten Muslim countries -- Jordan, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Indonesia, Turkey, Morocco and Bangladesh -- to gauge Muslim views of the United States. Gallup's findings were sobering. Gallup found that a substantial majority of the people in eight of the ten countries do not believe that the United States is serious about improving their well being or that the United States is serious about establishing democratic systems in the Muslim world. The only exceptions were Bangladesh. . .where views were evenly split. . .and Morocco. . .where there remains some trust and confidence in the United States. Across all ten Muslim nations, an average of 60 percent viewed the United States unfavorably. In Saudi Arabia, our unfavorable rating was 79 percent. . .in Jordan, 62 percent. . .and in Pakistan, 65 percent. The lowest unfavorable rating was in Lebanon. . .it was 42 percent. I would expect that number has risen in the last year. We must not allow this fracture to occur, and it need not happen.

One of the ten Muslim countries that Gallup polled was Turkey. It is a critically important Muslim country and represents Muslim views of America and the West. It is located at the crossroads between Europe and the Middle East, a geostrategic link of commerce, energy, culture and history between East and West. This Muslim country has a secular democratic government and has been a strong ally of the West since World War II.

Turkey, along with Greece, joined NATO in 1951, two years after NATO was created. A Gallup Poll conducted in October 2006 found that between 2001 and 2005, the percentage of Turks who view the United States as "very unfavorably" jumped from 14 percent to 42 percent. Sixty-two percent of Turks view the United States either "unfavorably" or "very unfavorably." If this trend continues with a new generation of Turks, it will have disastrous consequences for the Middle East, Europe and the United States.

For more than five decades, Turkey has been one of America's indispensable allies. But we are witnessing a dangerous unwinding of a key relationship between the West and Turkey. We must not allow this to become a reality.'

i'll leave the turkish stuff without comment for the moment - but i'm sick to death of the 'clash of civilization' stuff. read this again:

"Gallup's findings were sobering. Gallup found that a substantial majority of the people in eight of the ten countries do not believe that the United States is serious about improving their well being or that the United States is serious about establishing democratic systems in the Muslim world."

i'd argue that a majority of AMERICANS probably don't even believe that. certainly a majority of democrats. and i'd argue that a substantial % of australians/canadians/british don't believe it. europeans too.

heck, a sizable proportion of mouth-breathers probably don't even believe that.