US Public Worried about ISIL, Putin– But Climate Change is Real Challenge

http://www.juancole.com/2014/08/worried-climate-challenge.html

US Public Worried about ISIL, Putin– But Climate Change is Real Challenge
By Juan Cole | Aug. 29, 2014

In a new Pew/ USA Today poll, the American public shows itself alarmed by the rise of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in northern Iraq and Syria as a threat to US security, finding it more threatening even than Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who has risen on the villain scale quite a lot. Iran is seen as less menacing, as is North Korea. The Israel-Palestinian struggle is seen as a threat to the US by a little over half. More Americans still think the US is doing too much as the world’s policeman, but those who think it is doing too little have greatly increased in number, especially among Republicans.



But almost no Republicans think Global Warming is a threat, and only slightly more than a majority of Democrats do. In short, the US public is again being misled by its media and politicians as to the true shape of the world, and is likely to suffer pretty badly for this ignorance.

Americans’ concern about the rise of the so-called “Islamic State” is justified. It is an extremely nasty and vicious organization, and it has made significant advances this summer in northern Iraq. The public largely supports giving US close air support to Kurdish and Iraqi military forces against it.



But it seems likely that the public is not being given a sense of proportion about the region. Conservative pro-American monarchies in the Middle East include Morocco, Jordan, and the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Secular republics that are non-NATO allies or at least relatively friendly toward the US include Algeria, Egypt and Yemen (though Yemen has local militant movements not under government control). Governments of the mild religious right have risen in Tunisia and Turkey but they are pro-American (Turkey is a NATO ally). Lebanon is hard to categorize– its government is pro-American but it includes Hizbullah which is not. It is not clear how much of the militia faction-fighting in Libya is a security threat to the US, and apparently people have been relatively unconcerned by the Syrian civil war until recently.