NO SALE IN THE ARAB WORLD – AT 11:37 A.M. ET:  You'd think, with all the outreach going on from this administration toward our misunderstood friends in the Arab world, that some impact would be evident. 

But Dan Pipes, in NRO, notes a recent poll that show some pretty disappointing results:

Gallup’s results show something of a wash: Obama does distinctly better than George W. Bush in Mauritania (going from 44 to 69 percent) and Egypt (6 to 19 percent). He improves on Bush just over the margin of error in Algeria (going from 25 to 30 percent). He improves on Bush within the margin of error in the Palestinian Territories (from 13 to 16 percent). The two are tied in Lebanon (at 25 percent). And Obama does worse than Bush in Iraq (going from 35 to 30 percent).

Also noteworthy is that Obama’s current standing has declined among all six of the populations from what it was in mid-2009. The smallest drop (3 percent) was in Iraq and the largest (18 percent) in Egypt.

Comments: (1) These polls register a highly unimpressive showing for someone who placed so much emphasis on improving U.S. standing among Muslims. (2) The graph of Arabic-speakers’ attitudes toward Obama differs from that of Americans’ views: The former went up and then down, while the latter went down and then flattened out. That said, both at present show a downward trend.

COMMENT:  Is anyone shocked?  The idea that this self-proclaimed new messiah could actually work miracles in the Arab world is ludicrous.  These cultures have their own point of view, and their own leaders and news media, feeding them the worst propaganda every day.

This reminds me of an isolationist senator who, after the Nazis invaded Poland in September of 1939, exlaimed how all this could have been prevented had he just had five minutes to talk with Adolf Hitler.

Grand illusions die hard, then get reborn.

May 30, 2010