Via Abu Aardvark, WorldPublicOpinion.org commissioned a poll on international attitudes toward U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf and found remarkable levels of global opposition. Energy-sucking Hong Kong is 59 percent against it. Taiwan, of all places, is 45 percent against it. The frigging Ukraine, which sometimes acts as if it wants to be the 51st state, is 56 percent against it. From their press release:

Majorities opposing US naval bases in the Gulf are highest in the Middle East: Egypt (91%) the Palestinian Territories (90%), Turkey (77%), Jordan (76%) and Azerbaijan (66%). The only countries where majorities say US naval bases in the Gulf are a good idea are the United States (70%), Nigeria (60%—including 54% of Nigerian Muslims), and Kenya (53%).

Interestingly, the question wasn’t polled in any Persian Gulf country besides Iran. So I asked the poll’s research director, Clay Ramsay, why that was, and he explained that his firm seeks partner polling-firms in each country that it would like to pose questions in, and for the current round of questioning — which are not given to the poll firms ahead of time — it wasn’t able to partner with polling firms in any Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

What about Iran? You may notice, if you click through the links, that you don’t actually get an Iranian breakdown on the question. That’s because the question wasn’t really asked the same way in Iran. Ramsay emailed me an April 2008 survey his partners conducted — it’s a PDF, viewable here — that shows 65 percent of Iranians wanting the U.S. out of the Persian Gulf. Not exactly the same thing but fairly similar. And unsurprising.

Still, this is pretty surprising overall. The U.S. naval presence in the Persian Gulf isn’t welcome to most people. Well, who’s stepping up to take over protection of the shipping lanes, hmm? Who wants to be globocop?

I’d be interested in seeing a list of all the completely insane things Max has said and written over the last decade.

Why, so would I! But I’m going to be lazy and stick to the locus classicus of Max Boot batshittery: “The Case For American Empire,” from the Weekly Standard’s October 15, 2001 issue. I hear you objecting — Yeah, yeah, we know all about that one. But do you? Do you? Sure, you remember this quote:

Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.

But it’s a shame, really, because the baroque foolishness of that line — no Englishman, for instance, would be ahistorical enough to engage in such unironic empire-nostalgia — has obscured the less-florid-but-still-barking-mad bits of the essay. For instance, let’s take my favorite:

Once Afghanistan has been dealt with, America should turn its attention to Iraq. It will probably not be possible to remove Saddam quickly without a U.S. invasion and occupation–though it will hardly require half a million men, since Saddam’s army is much diminished since the Gulf War, and we will probably have plenty of help from Iraqis, once they trust that we intend to finish the job this time. Once we have deposed Saddam, we can impose an American-led, international regency in Baghdad, to go along with the one in Kabul. With American seriousness and credibility thus restored, we will enjoy fruitful cooperation from the region’s many opportunists, who will show a newfound eagerness to be helpful in our larger task of rolling up the international terror network that threatens us.

Pretty much every clause of that paragraph has been, uh, overtaken by events. It says oh so much about John McCain that he’d pick such a paragon of insight, curiosity and sagacity as a foreign-policy surrogate.