WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, there is no consensus outside the United States that Islamist militants from al Qaeda were responsible, according to an international poll published on Wednesday.

The survey of 16,063 people in 17 nations found majorities in only nine countries believe al Qaeda was behind the attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,000 people in 2001.

U.S. officials squarely blame al Qaeda, whose leader Osama bin Laden has boasted of organizing the suicide attacks by his followers using hijacked commercial airliners.

On average, 46 percent of those surveyed said al Qaeda was responsible, 15 percent said the U.S. government, 7 percent said Israel and 7 percent said some other perpetrator. One in four people said they did not know who was behind the attacks.

The poll was conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org, a collaborative project of research centers in various countries managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland in the United States.

In Europe, al Qaeda was cited by 56 percent of Britons and Italians, 63 percent of French and 64 percent of Germans. The U.S. government was to blame, according to 23 percent of Germans and 15 percent of Italians.

Respondents in the Middle East were especially likely to name a perpetrator other than al Qaeda, the poll found.

Israel was behind the attacks, said 43 percent of people in Egypt, 31 percent in Jordan and 19 percent in the Palestinian Territories. The U.S. government was blamed by 36 percent of Turks and 27 percent of Palestinians.

In Mexico, 30 percent cited the U.S. government and 33 percent named al Qaeda.

The only countries with overwhelming majorities blaming al Qaeda were Kenya with 77 percent and Nigeria with 71 percent.

Interviews were conducted in China, Indonesia, Nigeria, Russia, Egypt, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, the Palestinian Territories, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey and Ukraine.

The poll, taken between July 15 and Aug. 31, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 to 4 percent.

Sheesh. Al Qaeda leaders did nothing but brag about their attack for years but apparently even that’s not enough to convince people. For crying out loud, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh actually sat down for a book about it with author and Al Jazeera reporter Yosri Fouda (Masterminds of Terror). Binalshibh was captured days after the interview, reportedly because unbeknownst to Fouda, Western and Pakistani intelligence were trailing the him.

Anyway, it’s just a reminder that for all the talk of the world being so sophisticated and we Americans backwards it’s often quite the opposite.

Also note that Kenya and Nigeria have no problem believing 9-11 was perpetrated by al Qaeda, which is directly related to their citizens dying at al Qaeda’s hands in 1998. Maybe once al Qaeda bombs embassies in Mexico they’ll come around too.

Meanwhile, there’s no excuse for the nutty Europeans. 25% of Germans? Really?

I responded today to a letter I read in the Wall Street Journal where the writer claimed the following:

“Whether you agree or disagree with his [George W. Bush] policies, he has been unable to sustain the goodwill and support of the world community that accrued to the U.S. after 9/11, largely as a result of his lack of experience and knowledge of the world at large and our place in the global community.”

I’ve heard this misnomer repeated ad nauseam for years, but I have found that true goodwill doesn’t come with strings attached.

Indeed, the very concept of “squandered goodwill,” as it’s often packaged, is nonsense. Goodwill is something someone proffers out of sheer benevolence. If one must bend to the whims and beliefs of the giver in order to earn goodwill then it was never goodwill to begin with.

Many of the liberal’s so-called “world community,” well before the war in Iraq began, offered support only on a conditional basis while simultaneously telling us we had it coming.

One month after 9-11, NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani justifiably refused to accept a $10 million donation to the Twin Towers Fund from Saudi Prince Al-Walid because the prince suggested the U.S. should lessen its support of Israel. The irony of a self-imposed royal autocrat from a family of autocrats telling the United States it should support an Islamic-fundamentalist hijacked non-country instead of the region’s only liberally constitutional representative democracy goes without saying.

Here’s another example of the Goodwill Misnomer: John Rosenthal noted in the WSJ the “myth of squandered sympathy,” citing the now famous op-ed in France’s Le Monde by Jean-Marie Colombani, titled “We Are All Americans.” Just one year later — again, six months before the war in Iraq — Mr. Colombani reflected that “we have all become anti-American,” specifically citing American opposition to both the Kyoto Protocol and an International Criminal Court. Curiously, Rosenthal noted, the Le Monde writer failed to mention that both were extensions of Clinton administration policies — policies quite in place when Europeans were supposedly “all Americans.”

Meanwhile and conversely, the US is often the recipient of obstruction by a 192-member United Nations whose overall budget is financed by almost 25 percent by the American taxpayer – and yet we continue to fund when debatably none of the other 191 members would put up with it.

And when the US military delivered aid to Indonesia in 2004 for the Asian Tsunami or to Myanmar this year we did not demand their governments oppose treaties harmful to US interests, or give money to the victims of Palestinian suicide bombers, etc.

Instead, we just helped them.