-
The Cable
Rand Paul: You’re Arming al Qaeda’s Allies
-
War of Ideas
No, 3-D Printing Won’t End Hunger
-
Passport
Why Does the U.S. Get All the Tornadoes?
Posted By Colum Lynch
Tuesday, June 21, 2011 - 9:47 AM
Share
First the good news: U.S. President Barack Obama is more than twice as popular in Egypt as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad.
Now, the bad news: the American president's standing has never been worse in Egypt, plummeting since 2008, when he received a 25 percent favorability rating, to 12 percent in 2011. Even Osama Bin Laden, the late al Qaeda leader, was more popular this year, with a 21 percent favorability ranking. The Iranian leader fared worse, dropping from 21 percent favorability rating in 2008 to a miserable 5 percent.
The findings are drawn from a public poll of Egyptian views in the aftermath of the public uprising that brought about the resignation of Egypt's fallen leader Hosni Mubarak. The poll was commissioned by the International Peace Institute, a New York-based think tank with close ties to the United Nations and Arab governments.
The poll seeks to capture the mood of the country in the lead up to the Egypt's first post-Mubarak election, and to handicap the presidential campaign. It shows that Egyptians currently fret over issues like the economy, stability, and government corruption more than they worry about the course of the country's democratic transition.
According to the poll, conducted by Charney Research and based on interviews with 800 Egyptians, Amr Moussa, the outgoing Arab League chief, has emerged as an early frontrunner. Thirty-two percent of respondents say they would vote for Moussa, who once served as Mubarak's foreign minister.
Essam Sharraf, an engineering professor who is serving as the country's interim prime minister, finished second with 16 percent of votes ( though his favorability ranking is higher than Moussa's). And Mohammed Tantawi, the army chief, finished third with 8 percent of those questioned saying they would vote for him. Mohammed El Baradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency who emerged from retirement to serve as Egypt's best known pro-democracy advocate, finished seventh, with only 2 percent of respondents pledging to vote for him.
The poll shows that the Egyptian army, which refused orders to fire on public demonstrators during the country's popular uprising, remains "extremely popular" with 90 percent of Egyptian respondents expressing a favorable view. Egypt's various secular parties also did well, garning 25 precent of respondents' votes, while Islamist parties gained 19 percent. The best-known political parties, the New Wafd Party and the Muslim Brotherhood, received respectively 40 percent and 31 percent favorability ratings. The Brotherhood's unfavorability rating, at 29 percent, was 10 points higher.
"The military right now is riding a wave of popularity because it is seen as playing two key roles [in Egypt's popular revolution]," Craig Charney, the pollster, told Turtle Bay. "It delivered the coup de grace to Mubarak and did it in a way that maintained a substantial degree of stability."
Charney said that the findings also demonstrated that fears of a religious take over by Islamists are overblown. "The much feared green-tide just isn't there, with the Muslim Brotherhood receiving 12 percent while the Salafists for all their sound and fury came away with only 4 percent," Charney said.
While an exiled Egyptian national, Ayman al Zawahiri, has been selected as the new leader of Al Qaeda, the poll suggested that the terror organization would have been better at influencing events in Egypt under the leadership of their late Saudi leader, Osama Bin laden, who was killed by elite U.S. commandos in Pakistan.
According to the poll, bin Laden's favorability ratings rose from 18 percent of those questioned in 2008 to 21 percent in 2011. In contrast, Zawahiri scored a favorability rating of only 11 percent this year.
Charney said that while other polls have found somewhat higher support for President Obama's response to the Egyptian uprising, he has suffered from a generally dim view of American policy throughout the region.
"Despite President Obama's words and measures in support of Egypt's revolution, he only narrowly edges out the leaders of al Qaeda and Iran in popular regard there," Charney said in a statement. "But our findings do clearly show that Egyptians have little regard for the likes of al-Zawahiri and Ahmadinejad."
Follow me on Twitter @columlynch
EXPLORE:AFRICA, ARAB WORLD, CAIRO DISPATCH, DEMOCRACY, EGYPT, ELECTIONS, IRAN, ISLAM, ISRAEL/PALESTINE, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION 
Does anybody really care what the egyptians think? Screw them, tell them to go oppress some more women!
i feel the same way,i prefer osama to oduma
Obama has caused much more damage to the U.S. then Osama ever dreamed of. Obama is Osama's hero!
Obama, the Not So Secret Agenda
Osama's death and injury list was minimal according to Obama's perverted actions since become president. Who promoted black panthers at the polling stations, smears on law enforcement, union corruption spreading to the WH, muslims, destroying the constitution, the PIgford Scandal, project Gun Runner, a dysfunctional re-tread cabinet, czars who do not report to congress, t-shirt rallies at memorials? Obama damage will be longer lasting than Osama's damage. He follows orders of the Bilderberg Group and they are still pulling their puppet's strings!
Well TOO BAD SO SAD, Osama has become Shark Poo by now. Screw Egypt.
I'm not surprised Osama is preferred. He at least made clear whose side he was on. Obama on the other hand serves too many masters with conflicting positions and is still trying to figure out how he got where he is because he knows he is not smart enough to be here.
The UN is a joke, it panders to third world dictators, Islamic lunatics and anyone who wishes to put America down. Just like the Nobel Prize organization giving prizes to Obama & Gore for basically doing nothing, the UN has become a body of elitists do nothings unable to solve the simplest problems.
"The United States has given Egypt an average of $2 billion annually since 1979, much of it military aid, according to the Congressional Research Service. The combined total makes Egypt the second largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel."
One seriously wonders why, in addition to Obama and the G8 pledging an additional $40BILLION to the Muslim rebels overthrowing regional governments dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood who have already declared that they would not abide by the 1977 Sadat brokered Egypt Israeli peace accords and whose citizens are not actively killing Coptic Christians and burning churches in their attempt at ethnic cleansing, WHY we continue to give them aid - especially as the majority of it goes to their military which will conceivably be used against parties allied to our interests.
The notion of us reaping a positive return is a pipe dream. its time we face facts and deal with the region accordingly. And unfortunately, Obama is the worst thing to happen to the state of the Middle East (AND to the US) in our lifetime.
Osama killed ~3-4K Americans, Obama has killed an entire nation.
Yeah, I'd take Osama over Obummer any day of the week and twice on Sunday if I had no other choices.
Egyptians probably see that Obama has done more damage to the U. S. economy than Osama could ever have hoped.
Ask yourself what the real threat is . . .
This survey begs the obvious snarky comment about how Obama was supposed to rescue America’s world reputation from the cowboy Bush. Remember? The media reveled in alleging he had done everything he could to trash our image during his Presidency.
What we should really take away from this is the implication of 1 in 5 Egyptians viewing a prominent terrorist leader more favorably that the titular head of the Free World. For too long our political leaders, pundits, and talk show hosts have downplayed the threat of the new emerging Islam to the rest of the world by portraying terrorists as ‘fringe.’
We need to recognize that there is a huge percentage of Muslims who, when given the choice, would accept Sharia as the word of God establishing their rule of law as opposed to the West’s view that Natural Law sets the basis for our governmental framework.
Look back to history. Lenin had a core of fewer than 50 people that he used to topple the 400 year old Romanov dynasty. If even one percent of the world’s Muslim’s got serious about imposing Sharia on the rest of us, we’d have to deal with 10 million people.
They are both cancers for America
Osama is dead (over 10 years ago) and Obama supports endless Wars for Israel, it all started nearly a decade ago under a false flag attack.
9/11 and Israel, here:
http://www.iuniverse.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000190526
Are we speaking about the same Obama BinLyin.
I'm impressed that the Egyptians can tell the difference between osama and obama. I sure can't...
Osama Obama Biden Bin Laden
One coincidence? Two coincidences?
NO COINCIDENCE
http://illuminaticonspiracy.blogspot.com
Did the Free Republic people suddenly invade the comments section here? I see a lot of emotional, reactionary, bumper sticker phrase commenting without any real analysis of the content of the article. The lack of rational, logical thinking in the comments is disappointing.
???WELCOME TO
===== http://www.bsafebiz.com / ====
sells clothing,footwear,handbags,Sunglasses
Our products sell well in Europe and North America.
Our main product list is as follows:
1.Fashion Sports shoes:
Shox,Dunk,Jordan, Air max, Air force,Adidas,
Puma,Prada,D&G, Chanel,
Gucci, Lacoste,
Genius,Versace,Convers,Coach,Dsquared,Maurt,etc.
2.Fashion T-Shirt & Jeans & Jacket:
Bape,AF,AAF,BBC,Evsiu,Juicy,GGG,Burberry
Hardy,Chanel,G-Star,Red
WE ACCEPT PAYPAL PAYMENT
YOU MUST NOT MISS IT!!
Longtime Washington Post correspondent Colum Lynch reports on all things United Nations for Turtle Bay.
Read More
May/June 2013
-
Profile
-
FP Power Map
-
Think Again
Follow us on Twitter | Visit us on Facebook | Follow us on RSS | Subscribe to Foreign Policy
About FP | Meet the Staff | Foreign Editions | Reprint Permissions | Advertising | Writers’ Guidelines | Press Room | Work at FP
Services:Subscription Services | Academic Program | FP Archive | Reprint Permissions | FP Reports and Merchandise | Special Reports | Buy Back Issues
Privacy Policy | Disclaimer | Contact Us
11 DUPONT CIRCLE NW, SUITE 600 | WASHINGTON, DC 20036 | Phone: 202-728-7300 | Fax: 202-728-7342
FOREIGN POLICY is published by the FP Group, a division of The Washington Post Company
All contents ©2013 The Foreign Policy Group, LLC. All rights reserved.
(18)
HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE