[governance] Americans Disapprove of U.N. in Record Numbers

[Yehuda Katz]

Americans Disapprove of U.N. in Record Numbers
FOX NEWS
Friday, March 06, 2009 

Art. Ref.:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,506726,00.html

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The United Nations has never done a worse job in its 60-year history.

That's what Americans think, according to a Gallup poll that shows a meager 26
percent approval rating for the world body — which U.S. taxpayers gave nearly
$3 billion to support last year.

Gallup's test of American attitudes toward the U.N. has become an annual
February tradition in recent years, something like a curmudgeonly groundhog who
always sees his shadow. The poll of roughly 1,000 U.S. adults had a margin of
error of +/– 3 percent.

Since the run-up to the Iraq War, when the U.S. faced stiff opposition to the
coalition invasion, the U.N.'s popularity in its host nation has steadily
dropped. Sixty-five percent of Americans think the sprawling bureaucracy has
done a "poor job" in confronting problems it has to face.

The world body has never polled very high in the 56 years of the Gallup poll,
topping out at 58 percent approval in 2002. But the current drop is hardly
unique; during the Reagan administration, the poll bottomed out at 28 percent,
which stood as a record for over two decades.

The U.N.'s numbers took a similar nosedive in the mid-1990s amid the conclusion
of the Bosnia War (which it tried unsuccessfully to stop) and the Rwandan
genocide, in which it did not intercede.

Even the U.S. Congress, whose approval rating was barely the legal age of
consent back in 2008, has rocketed ahead of the U.N. A FOX News/Opinion
Dynamics Poll from March 3-4 shows that 41 percent of Americans have given
Congress the thumbs up, even in the middle of an economic meltdown.

• Article Links:

Gallup poll
http://www.gallup.com/poll/116347/United-Nations.aspx

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P.S.: How much should the CPSR.org be courting the IGF in the UN's agenda ?____________________________________________________________
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