Tweet study reveals what people in the Middle East really think about the U.S.

[n2doc]

By Benjamin Plackett on October 01, 2014

We could argue the pros and cons of U.S. air strikes against Islamic State terrorists until we’re blue in the face. But new research shows the people of Syria and Iraq are unlikely to thank us for carrying them out—even if they’re terrified of what comes with Islamic State rule.

By studying more than 2.2 million tweets posted from the Middle East, researchers from Princeton and Harvard have gauged public opinion in the region during the major news events of the last few years.

The researchers, who presented their findings at the recent American Political Science Association’s annual meeting, concluded that citizens of Arab countries don’t have an inherent hatred of Americans, but rather a deep distrust of any U.S. military intervention—oh, and they dislike Iranian intervention even more.

“A lot of the data we have on anti-Americanism is traditionally based on opinion polls,” says David Romney from Harvard University, who was involved with the study. Unfortunately, he says, these polls are often inaccurate.

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http://www.dailydot.com/politics/middle-east-twitter-study-us-air-strikes/

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1. People are people

LBJ was right all those years ago during a trip around Africa as VP. He told an aide that he saw the same thing in the eyes of Senegalese mothers that he saw in the eyes of Texas mothers: the hope for a better life for their children.

The above doesn't exactly fit the article, but reading the article, and the general sense of it, reminded me of that story. We have a lot of differences between cultures and countries, but the human condition is all the commonality we'll ever need.