7th Anniversary of 9/11

I'm not going to write a tribute, or get very sentimental today. There's plenty of that going on elsewhere today.

What I would like to point out is how few people in the world believe Al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks on Sep 11, 2001.

In an international poll (found via Hot Air) in only 9 out of 17 countries surveyed, do the majority of people believe Al-Qaeda was responsible. And it gets worse:

On average, 46 percent say that al Qaeda was behind the attacks while 15 percent say the US government, seven percent Israel, and seven percent some other perpetrator. One in four say they do not know.

But what about Western countries? They have the most common sense right? Well, I'm ashamed to say, not much:

Even in European countries, the majorities that say al Qaeda was behind 9/11 are not overwhelming. Fifty-seven percent of Britons, 56 percent of Italians, 63 percent of French and 64 percent of Germans cite al Qaeda.

Remarkably, the countries that had the highest percentage of people who correctly identified Al-Qaeda as the culprit were Kenya and Nigeria, with 77 and 71%, respectively. Is this because they don't have very much access to all the conspiracy theories floating around the net?

The worst offender is Egypt where an astoundingly low 16% say AQ was responsible, while an equally mind-boggling 43% think Israel was to blame. Israel!

The New York Times recently ran an excellent article (one of the very few times I have recommended the NYT) on 9/11 attitudes in Egypt and why they won't accept the facts of 9/11. A typical example:

“Maybe people who executed the operation were Arabs, but the brains? No way,” said Mohammed Ibrahim, 36, a clothing-store owner in the Bulaq neighborhood of Cairo. “It was organized by other people, the United States or the Israelis.”

The importance here is that even if we are winning the military fight, we are currently losing the information war in many countries. And that is the aspect of the War on Terror that has the most lasting effect.