Dear Commons Community,
During my recent visit to Egypt, as we were checking into the hotel in Cairo for the first leg of the trip, the young bellhop who brought our luggage to the room asked: Where are you from? What country? What country? I told him the United States. He replied: “Welcome to Egypt – I like your president!” Throughout the next nine days, this scenario would play itself out over and over again whether in the cities or towns or in the more desolate desert communities such as Abu Simbel on the Sudan border. Egyptians are aware of President Barack Obama and he is someone they like and to whom they can relate. The fact that President Obama had given a major address in June 2009 at Cairo University surely helped his popularity among the people in Egypt. However, I felt proud of the fact that we had elected a president who was able to touch young lives in this mostly Muslim country. It was also a welcome change from other recent trips abroad but that is a subject for another blog posting.
Tony
Perhaps Obama is good to Egyptians (this far) but the real question remains: is he good to his own people?
So far, the American People have been force-fed secretive bills through a largely frustrated Congress and that can’t be right. The idea of an honest President is appealing but if he’s the real deal, why is he incapable of siding with the People’s best interest?
Waging is war in both Irak and Afghanistan may be cool for the paranoid folks at the DHS but I can’t imagine there wouldn’t be a better way to use those trillions of dollars for good instead of misery, destruction and death of people who are labeled as terrorists before being dignified as human beings.
Anyway, it’s nice to see people (in Africa) still like the idea of a free world, through Obama or otherwise.