In addition to the public's desire for a more isolationist position on the world stage and the complete disconnect over Israeli-Palestinian issues, there were many other divisions between the elite foreign policy minds and the general public. For example, nearly half of the CFR members polled put Afghanistan and Pakistan as the two most important issues facing the country today while only one in ten Americans thought so.
Nearly 80% of CFR associates give President Obama high marks for his foreign policy efforts on Iran and China while less than 50% of the general public do. In fact, only one in three Americans give him a good rating on his policy relations with China. The vast majority of Americans also feel that China's emergence as a world power is a major threat to the US while only one in five CFR members feel that way.
Similarly, over 80% of those polled in the CFR agree with President Obama's decision to close GuantanamoBay which has been a major point of contention with American allies in other countries and a clear example of judicial double standard for American critics around the world. Yet less than 40% of the public favors its closure in spite of the fact that more than 3 out of 4 detainees there, those who Rumsfeld once hypocritically proclaimed "the worst of the worst" terrorists, have been freed without ever having been accused of any crime whatsoever, even after years of confinement.
On the question of torture, the topic that so disgusted President Reagan that he sponsored legislation to outlaw it on the world's stage, the divergence between world opinion, almost exactly echoed by the CFR, and American opinion couldn't be greater. While only 13% of CFR members feel that torture could be at least sometimes necessary, 54% of Americans believe it is required at least some of the time. Even with the solid scientific evidence that torture invariably produces inaccurate and misleading information, most Americans still see its need on the world stage.
In addition17 out of 20 members of the CFR see the instability in Pakistan as a major threat to the US, but less than half of the public agrees. While US covert operations there, including constant American UAV attacks on civilians and the use of mercenary groups such as Xe (formerly known as Blackwater) and others, become more and more highlighted in news reports around the world, Americans seem almost blasà © in their opinion on the importance of steadiness in the region, especially in Pakistan. With a growing worldwide perception that Pakistan is slowly slipping into civil strife and chaos, Americans seem almost oblivious to the ramifications should Pakistan blow up into a major civil war and find its nuclear weapons cache compromised.
But on the topic of defense and the use of US military, the disconnect passes from being an annoyance of misinformation brought on by concerted media and congressional lobbyist efforts to sway public opinion government action and enters the realm of real imperialism and hegemonic warfare. The disparity between the Council and the American public couldn't be wider. Nearly 3 out of 4 Americans want to keep or increase our defense spending while 4 out of 10 CFR members want to reduce it. Over 60% of the American public would also favor a war with Iran if they learned that Iran had a nuclear bomb while only 33% of the CFR agrees.
Even though the US economy is already buckling under the strain of funding two illegal wars already in progress, America's appetite for more war and more military spending has not yet been sated. It appears that the gladiator mentality in the US has yet to reach its zenith and 6 out of 10 would still favor a war over the simple fact of one more nation possessing a nuclear bomb, regardless of what that nation's intentions were for the bomb. It has been over two centuries since Iran started a war with anyone, yet the mere fact of their attainment of a nuclear device would be sufficient for most Americans to actively seek a third military engagement and further bloodshed on foreign soil.
These latest results tend to show an American public increasingly at odds with the rest of the world, misinformed or poorly informed on topics of great import, and in disagreement with its own elite whose knowledge and understanding of world affairs far outweighs them. The US MSM is providing such a meager and slanted view of global events that Americans have become that which they used to loathe. Former President Reagan so abhorred torture that he said this on May 20, 1988, "The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention. It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today."
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