The New York Observer has a terrifically fair and balanced piece on the current state of Iraq, including the attitudes there. Good quotes:
"This is not the time for the Americans to get out of the country. This is not the time …. Life is better here. Better! A hundred times, life is better." Of all the places to meet an Iraqi doing unpaid public relations for the Bush administration, this one seemed highly unlikely. Ali Al-Shikhly, 50, was pausing on the stairwell of the downtown building where his office is located.......Of course, I cannot speak for the Iraqis. But after spending four of the past six months talking to Iraqis, I do feel that it is relatively safe to make the following five points:
One, most Iraqis do not want America to leave now or very soon. Two, while it is true that a huge proportion of Iraqis have at least some very negative opinions about the war and life here since, it is also true that a huge proportion of those opinions boil down to anger at the Americans for not being enough of a presence here, not anger at the Americans for being too much of a presence. Three, there is very little to support the notion that Iraqis would be, or feel, notably better off under United Nations occupation than under a United States–led occupation. Four, although the Bush administration should be hung out to dry for whatever it has lied about, it is widely accepted here that various of their pet assertions happen to coincide with the truth. Iraqis do not need Mr. Bush to tell them that most of the troublemakers here are not resistance fighters, but highly paid, often imported thugs; Iraqis have been saying that from the start. Fifth, a steady stream of terrible events has generated a steady stream of legitimately negative news stories about Iraq, the sum effect of which seems to have been to leave the rest of the world with the impression that Iraq now appears in the dictionary next to "unqualified disaster"; that hardly anything is improving here, and that hardly anyone is or feels any better off than he or she did before the war. This impression is false....
....With all of this and more, the pharmacist concurred. "I don’t think we will have a good future when our government is Jewish," said Ahoob. "Jewish and imperialism."
Ahoob Khalil in the pharmacy is as much of an Iraqi as Ali Al-Shikhly from the stairwell. As far as I can tell, his viewpoint is by far the more common, but hers may catch right up.
Go read the whole thing, it's very good.
By the way, I found this via Professor Reynolds, who also notes another bit of trash-reporting by Newsweek, this time dissing Chief Wiggles. Ye Gods.
Interesting - and I've read a lot of things along these lines; essentially, the Iraqi's seem to view us as the super-human tools of the Zionist conspiracy who for murky reasons are not magically making all perfect. Being from an Arab culture and just getting out of 30 years of Stalinist dictatorship can, I guess, make for some odd opinions about things.
All in all, I think we can work with them - of course, 50 years from now Iraq will be voting against us in the Security Council and demanding that we don't liberate Tibet, but thats just the way of the world.
"there is very little to support the notion that Iraqis would be, or feel, notably better off under United Nations occupation than under a United States–led occupation."
Go tell the Iraqis that - they're under the strange impression that the UN would do a better job than the US :
Go Read The Whole Thing.
Thank you, eugene, now provide a credible source. Gallup polls show the exact opposite, and tend to be very unbiased in regards to the US. Arab news? I'm surprised they didn't declare that it was really Israel in charge of the occupation. Wait, in a way they already have.
Eugene,
Well, I went and read the whole thing - and Zogby seems to just be spinning the data in a way he likes, which is no different from Cheney spinning the data in a way Cheney likes. Thats the thing about polls, they aren't concrete evidence.
Concrete evidence is 70,000+ Iraqi's working in the security services backed by the United States.
The poll that Zogby helped create is backed by other polls - and they all show a bit of a mixed bag of information, but none of them show what the Zogby's of the world would prefer - that there is a groundswell of nationalistic Iraqi desire to fight the American liberation.