Toby's Ironman-In-Training Blog

Someone just showed me a great article on a scientific poll recently conducted in Iraq by Zogby International and the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, two well-respected polling organizations.

Among the findings (emphasis mine):

• Iraqis are optimistic. Seven out of 10 say they expect their country and their personal lives will be better five years from now. On both fronts, 32 percent say things will become much better.
• Five out of 10 said democracy is Western and won’t work in Iraq. One in 10 wasn’t sure. And four out of 10 said democracy can work in Iraq. People age 18-29 are much more rosy about democracy than other Iraqis, and women are significantly more positive than men.
• Asked to name one country they would most like Iraq to model its new government on from five possibilities — neighboring, Baathist Syria; neighbor and Islamic monarchy Saudi Arabia; neighbor and Islamist republic Iran; Arab lodestar Egypt; or the U.S. — the most popular model by far was the U.S. The U.S. was preferred as a model by 37 percent of Iraqis selecting from those five — more than Syria, Iran and Egypt put together.
• Asked whether Iraq should have an Islamic government, or instead let all people practice their own religion. Only 33 percent want an Islamic government; a solid 60 percent say no.
• 57 percent of Iraqis with an opinion have an unfavorable view of Osama bin Laden, with 41 percent of those saying it is a very unfavorable view.

All of this is very interesting, especially given the U.S. media’s insistence on portraying our presence in Iraq as a quagmire where we will continue to face guerilla attacks and an increasingly hostile populace who simply want us to leave. I would think that a poll such as this would be rather newsworthy, but I could not find any reference to this poll on any of the major news organizations’ websites.

The media love to play up the negative incidents in the “Sunni Triangle”, where resistance to us is fiercest and loyalty to Saddam is strongest (as the article states, “10,000 schools being rehabbed isn’t news; one school blowing up is a weeklong feeding frenzy”). This poll now shows us that this is a rather skewed perception of the country as a whole.