An About-Face on America
In Arab Eyes, the Former Land of Opportunity Can't Get Much Lower
By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page C01
CAIRO -- Whether he's in his 18th-floor office in Cairo's World Trade Center, or at his villa near the Pyramids, lawyer and law professor A. Kamal Aboulmagd moves in very different circles than most Egyptians. In his long and distinguished career, he has held ministerial posts in the Egyptian government, served as an adviser to the crown prince of Kuwait, held innumerable positions on panels and advisory committees, and devoted himself to human rights issues. He has lived in America and waxes poetic about the color of the leaves in autumn.
But his opinion of the United States today is not far removed from that of Egyptians of much more modest resources.
"He deserves to be in the Guinness Book of World Records," Aboulmagd says of President Bush. "He has changed the minds of the most people, about America, in the shortest period of time. Five years ago, they would say they like America, that it is an open society."
But not today, according to Aboulmagd, who bemoans the historically low esteem in which America is held in the Arab world. In Egypt, according to a highly regarded Pew Research Center poll two years ago, only 6 percent of people held a positive view of the United States.
And if a Zogby International poll in June, commissioned by the Arab American Institute, is to be believed, in the past two years unfavorable views of America among Egyptians rose from 76 percent to a whopping 98 percent. That makes Egypt the most anti-American of the six Arab countries polled by Zogby (3,300 Arabs living in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt were questioned).
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27436-2004Aug23.html
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