Islamic populations not impressed by Obama's reset efforts

Taking back some of the gains U.S. leadership enjoyed in 2009, four out of six Arab League countries Gallup has surveyed each year since 2008 are now less approving of U.S. leadership than they were in fall 2009. Egyptians’ approval ratings have declined the most since last fall (18 percentage points), followed by Algerians’ (13 points). Approval did not decline significantly in Iraq or the Palestinian Territories as the changes are within the margin of error.

The dips in U.S. leadership approval were recorded in Gallup surveys conducted in February and April 2010, ahead of the one-year anniversary of President Barack Obama’s June 4, 2009, Cairo address, which aimed to restart U.S. relations with Muslim societies. [...]

The country where Obama delivered his high-profile speech to the Muslim world is also the one where the swings in approval have been the largest. The precipitous decline in 2010 may reflect a perceived lack of progress on the issues many Egyptians said in May 2008 were most significant to improving their opinion of the United States: pulling out of Iraq, removing military bases from Saudi Arabia, supporting the rights of Muslims to elect their own governments, promoting greater economic development, closing Guantanamo Bay prison, and greater technology transfer and exchange of business expertise.