Pew Poll: Minds Changing in Middle East

[Adam's Apple]

Of Minds and Metrics
By Michael Barone, U.S. News & World Report
8/29/05

Metrics are hard to come by in the war on terrorism. We can know the number of improvised explosive devices that go off in Iraq and the number of suicide bombers there, but we can only guess at whether these numbers represent the last throes of a terrorist movement or its continuing growth. We can count the number of days the Iraqi parliament has moved the deadline for drafting a constitution--seven, as this is written--but cannot be sure what the effect of a finally drafted constitution will be. We can note that some 220,000 Iraqis took part in deliberations over the constitution and that the Iraqi electricity supply now exceeds that of prewar levels.

But the most important changes occurring, not just in Iraq but across the Muslim world, are changes in people's minds. These are harder, but not impossible, to measure. 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.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/050829/29barone.htm

 

[LuvRPgrl]

All great achievements meet great resistence.

The more and louder the anti war idiots scream, the greater it will make Bush's achievement when history looks back on it.

Those who claim (the liberals mostly) that we cannot create a fundamental shift in the philosophy or the mindset of arabs/muslims, are the biggest racists in existence (yet they want to call us conservatives the racists.)

Fear not, liberty is blowing in the wind, when the sweet smell of freedom reaches those who hunger for it , the lengths to which they will strive for it will make homicide murderers look like children crying for their bottle.