A Further Question about Iraq War Sentiments

“What other questions do I still have about Iraq?”  Wow, how about “which question am I going to pick to do some research on?!”  Hmm, let’s see: how about  “If some Iraqi civilians dislike Americans being in Iraq (for war purposes, at least), and some agree with Americans being there, how would I find out what percentage of each exists?  And what about all of the opinions in between?”  Ok, so this question is going to be about as difficult to answer as finding out what Americans themselves think about the war in Iraq… or even more difficult!  So here go my efforts…

When I first began to research on the internet to see if I could find any pro-American sentiment from Iraqis toward the war, I did not find much (possibly a statement in itself, possibly just because I was not using the right words in the search engine).  But I did find this interesting site that talks about Indian pro-American feelings.  Now it may not seem to relate to the topic very well, but there are many Muslims in India, and the article has some interesting polls that relate to the Iraq war and feelings about it on the international level.  Here is the site: http://pewglobal.org/commentary/display.php?AnalysisID=1002  

The next article I found was a NY Times article that talks about a blog by three brothers in Iraq who seemed to approve of America’s presence there.  The blog was very controversial, and I would like to find it in order to view it myself.  Here is the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/18/arts/18blog.html

Another article that I found cautioned us to be careful to understand any pro-American Iraqi sentiment, to see if it is really true or if it comes from some sort of government push from America to bolster its approval rate.  It is interesting and has some valid points, but I also think that we must then be careful to treat anti-American sentiments with the same level of critique.  Here is that article: http://terrorism.about.com/od/wariniraq/a/IraqResistance.htm

Finally, below are listed some various sites that link to polls on the Iraq war, some from Americans and some from Iraqis.  Now, granted I do not know the level of credibility of any of these sources; and if I were ever to teach any of these materials, I would definitely be doing more in-depth research!  The internet IS the just the internet!!!!!

Poll sites:

http://i.abcnews.com/PollingUnit/story?id=4444000&page=1   -- ABC news polls

http://www.abcnews.go.com/images/PollingUnit/1060a1IraqWhereThingsStand.pdf  --pdf of poll

http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm  polls- though from Americans, I think

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_on_the_Iraq_War#Iraqi_opinion  -- Iraqi polls, Wikipedia

ENJOY!!!!