Laughter is the obvious immediate reaction to the recent poll that found 30 per cent of Republicans in the US support bombing Agrabah, the fictional sultanate where the Disney movie Aladdin is set. The figure rises to 41 per cent for supporters of Donald Trump but even 19 per cent of Democrats polled were hawkish about teaching the cartoon sultanate a lesson in American military might.
However that initial instinct to guffaw is quickly replaced by a profound sense of despair at the lack of knowledge among Americans who, in less than a year, will decide who should be given control of the world’s most powerful military – although even the US might struggle to bomb a target that only exists in the imagination.
While residents of the beach resort of Aqaba in Jordan might be feeling a little nervous at these developments, one can merely hope that results of similar surveys in Europe, Japan or other developed countries would produce more enlightened results. But we’d need Aladdin’s genie to know that.
