Gallup Poll: Iran Rated As "America's Top Enemy"

Proving yet again that public opinion polls are largely meaningless in a nation in which 25% of the citizenry don't even know which country we declared our independence from, according to the latest Gallup poll, nearly one-third of Americans consider a country that poses exactly ZERO military threat to the United States as our "top enemy." Here are the sad and sorry details:

The 32% of Americans who name Iran is the highest reading Gallup has measured for that country, and is up from 25% last year.

More Americans mention China as the United States' greatest enemy (23%) this year than at any point in the 11-year history of the question, likely reflecting at least in part Americans' concern over China's global economic influence. Last year, China tied North Korea for second place, but mentions of North Korea have declined, leaving China alone in second place in 2012.

Also, over the last two years, Americans have been modestly more likely to mention Afghanistan as the nation's greatest enemy than in years prior, perhaps partly because U.S. attention has turned away from Iraq. Mentions of Iraq have dropped significantly since 2008.

Pathetically, a total of 12% still name either Iraq or Afghanistan, the two countries where we spent the last decade fighting brutal and completely unncessary wars of occupation, to still be our top enemy. I guess we didn't kill enough Iraqi civilians when we had the chance, or something. Those two, along with the aforementioned Iran, China and North Korea, were the only countries to register above 2% in the poll.

Sadly, only 1% of the respondents got the question right: given that we spend as much money on defense war as the rest of the countries on the planet combined, are wantonly destroying our own civil liberties, and we seem bound and determined to run our economy into the ground due to sheer greed and shortsightedness, the United States itself is without a doubt its own worst enemy.


Bonus: "Look away across the bay...Yankee gunboat come this way...Uncle Sam gonna save the day...Come tomorrow we all going to pay"