While it would be nice to have good ratings, I don't get too worked up over weepy sympathy for our victimhood.
Nor does the complaint acknowledge that our fight in Afghanistan seems to annoy the Arab Moslem street, too (you know, the "good war"). And a lot of other more mundane stuff angers them, when you think about it.
Yet despite the low polling, these people still want to move here. I guess they don't hate us that much.
And the governments of those people still work with us to fight jihadis (from my Jane's email updates):
Liaison between US intelligence agencies and Middle Eastern services has undergone a dramatic transformation since the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US. Cooperation between Arab countries and the US on sharing counterterrorism intelligence has become much deeper than it was in the 1990s.
So authoritarian regimes work with us against our common enemies. Isn't this the result that Neo-Realists want?
I'll take our current situation over our pre-2001 moral standing. Our moral standing and two bits will get us a cup of coffee. Our moral standing and a dozen box cutters didn't work too well for us either, for that matter.
