To no surprise, the topic for this week's APGAP extra credit deals with our recent presidential election. However, instead of focusing on the actual results, let's step back and ask the question; 'If the world could vote, who would they vote for?' There are many sites dedicated to this question, and all of them report similar results to the pie chart above. Why?, I wonder is this the case.
For extra credit do any, or all, of the following:
-develop and explain as many reasons as you can for the overwhelming support of President Obama world wide.
-research and find the only two countries in the world that would not have voted for President Obama in the recent election and explain why you think those two nations go against the trend.
If the world could vote in the U.S. election, only Israel and Pakistan would have voted against Obama. According to an article I read online from the Haaretz newspaper, "The foreign policy the American president is most identified with in that part of the world is the use of drones, unmanned aerial vehicles that carry out assassination missions of al-Qaida and Taliban targets, in some cases also killing innocent bystanders. Pakistanis, not unreasonably see the drone campaign as an infringement on their sovereignty and blame Obama for the unnecessary deaths." The Israelis opposition to Obama is perhaps due to a perception, "created largely by the pro-Netanyahu camp in the media, that he is unfriendly to Israel, as demonstrated in the demand that Israel freeze settlement activity earlier on in his first term (though he eventually gave up on that demand) and the more recent public warnings against an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities." The article also mentions how, despite Israel and Pakistan's opposition to the reelected president, Mitt Romney had no plans to discontinue Obama's policies in these countries.
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