No Outbreak of Anti-American Violence in Muslim World Since Pakistan Strike

By Andrew Cochran

Despite media stories about demonstrations in Pakistan against the U.S. strike, the fact is that there has been no outbreak of anti-American violence, or even a significant anti-American protest, in the Muslim world since the Pakistan strike last week. No American-owned facility, governmental or private in nature, has been bombed or damaged by protesters. To my knowledge (and I survey about 200 articles from sources worldwide daily), no American in those areas has been injured or even attacked. No group of Islamic clerics has issued a fatwa against us which would have any impact among Muslims (I discount the calls by individual clerics issued at this Friday's prayers, but I haven't seen any of those on the web). No American diplomat has been sent home from any Arab country, including from Pakistan. American aid workers, including U.S. military forces, working in the earthquake-ravaged Pak and Kashmir regions and in the tsunami-affected areas in Asia have not been kidnapped, attacked, or told to leave. And the governments or NGO's in those areas are still cashing our aid checks (who says money can't buy you love?). Moreover, none of these events happened in the period when it was most vulnerable to criticism, before we learned that the strike was justified by sound intelligence and so successful. So if the Muslim world hates us, if we are losing the "hearts and minds" battle (as asserted by former Clinton Administration NSC staffers Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon) you can't prove it from any event in the Arab world this week. I don't put much stock in polls as long-term indicators of sentiment, but one Nielsen poll taken in late November for a nonprofit group in the U.S. showed significant higher levels of public support among Pakistanis for the U.S. as a result of our post-earthquake aid. If that turned around on the "Arab street" after the strike, we haven't seen it yet, and I doubt that we will now. EDIT: Contrast the relative silence this week to the riots and killings last year over the supposed "desecration" of the Koran at Gitmo Bay, a story which turned out to be inaccurate.

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