By way of Bret Stephens oped in today’s WSJ, I came across this study from the Institute for Social Research at UMich [1], which included the following nuggets:

Between 2004 and 2006, the number of Iraqis who supported the idea of an Islamic state fell from 30% to 22%.
The number agreeing that religion and politics ought to be seperated rose from 27% to 41%.
The number of respondents who put their Iraqi identity ahead of their Muslim one rose from 30% to 60%.
And last but certainly not least, the number of Iraqis agreeing that it was “very important” for Iraq to be a democracy rose from 59% to 65%.

On an anecdotal level, Stephens oped goes on to note that

“Something basic has changed,” [Mithal al-Alusi, Iraqi member of parliament] says, noting that the terrorism that once was directed against Israel and the West has lost its cache on the Arab street now that Muslims have become its principal victims.

As I’ve discussed in the past, we need to separate positive feelings towards the US from positive feeling about anti-militant principles. All recent indicators are that the former are at a historical nadir, while the latter are healthy. It is easy to get wrapped up in statistics regarding how the US is perceived, but these poll numbers are like the body counts of Vietnam - an easy-to-measure metric that does a very poor job describing the current state of the conflict.

This conflict is not a popularity contest and people aren’t blowing themselves up because they hate the US. Hatred for the US is a symptom of deeper problems, not the cause of our problems. The poll data that drives long-run dynamics concerns those questions that ask “do you want a free press in your country?” or “do you think you should have a say in how your government is run?” The answers to these questions start to measure the root causes of problems: dysfunctional governments and stagnent economies.

Remember that victory for the bin Ladens of the world looks like a Taliban-style superpower. Victory for us looks like a world where Muslim countries are more integrated with the global economy, where Muslim girls are going to school and where Saudi, Iraqi and Jordanian professionals are competing with Indians and Chinese for technical jobs. Victory for us looks like a global company that arose from a Middle Eastern state becoming successful enough to buy an American company. When that day rolls around, we will have already won and global opinion of the US will be a non-issue.

[1] Tessler, Mark, Mansoor Moaddel, Ronald F. Inglehart. “What Do Iraqis Want?” Journal of Democracy, 17(1): 38-50. 2006.