Mail Call: Bullish on Obama

Readers of our cover package on Barack Obama's emerging world view reflected the excitement his candidacy generates. One saw him "as everything good in America." Another awaits "an America less unilateral and hubristic." And after the last eight years, one noted, "Obama can only shine."

How the World Views Barack Obama
Having read your July 28 cover story, "Obama Abroad," I must say that here in Africa, we see Barack Obama as living history. We see him as everything that is good in America. We consider him to be in the mold of American presidents such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton. His oratorical skills remind us of the great civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. We also view him as a native son, and a man proud of his ancestral heritage. My advice to him when dealing with Africa would be: look beyond our oppressors who masquerade as leaders and presidents, and obtain a more accurate picture from the oppressed people of Africa who live in abject poverty.
Kenechukwu Oyeka
Lagos, Nigeria

Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama draw large crowds when traveling overseas. But when Obama goes abroad, the crowds are waving the American flag and cheering. When Bush goes overseas, they are burning the American flag and protesting. I look forward to having a president who isn't the laughingstock of the international community.
Marc Perkel
San Bruno, California

Fareed Zakaria rightly reminds us of the role intellectuals such as George Kennan, Dean Acheson and Reinhold Niebuhr play in Barack Obama's outlook. Historian Tom Segev stresses that a future president must pay attention to ordinary people's feelings, rather than to official government positions. Obama isn't president yet, and may not be, but the message is clear: the world would like to see an America less unilateral and less hubristic.
Prof.Pedro Paulo A. Funari
Head, Center for Strategic Studies
State University of Campinas
Campinas, Brazil

I was very pleased with your article on the strengths of Barack Obama's foreign policy. I would like to add a reference to some of John McCain's glaring weaknesses and to the broader crisis of conservatism in America. Conservatives have come to play the role of scaremongers and scolding grandfathers. To the sufferers of America's economic crisis, recently disavowed McCain adviser Phil Gramm called the United States "a nation of whiners," and conservative intellectual George F. Will echoed that, saying Americans are "the crybabies of the Western world." When thousands of Americans lose their homes and millions go without health care, the answer of conservatism is clear: suck it up. McCain's prescription for foreign policy is to continue the Iraq War. All this is in the name of the "global war on terror," a half-baked delusion that McCain insists on pompously calling "the transcendental struggle of our time." Given this, Obama can only shine.
Craig Haston
Shrewsbury, England

While I sympathized with the direction of your piece on Barack Obama's foreign policy, I was dismayed to read that "Obama seems—unusually for a modern-day Democrat—highly respectful of the realist tradition." Which leaders are you referring to? Democratic presidents have been keenly aware that power, both its threat and its application, plays a preponderant role in foreign policy. It was Democrats Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson who fought, for good and ill, what are still the nation's three greatest wars abroad. It was Jimmy Carter's national-security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who funded Islamist fighters in Afghanistan to provoke a Soviet invasion of the "wasp's nest." Bill Clinton abandoned "idealism" both on the issue of making most-favored-nation status for China conditional on democratic reform, and by closing his eyes to the Rwanda genocide. Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations failed in large part because the bid for U.S. membership was scuttled by shortsighted isolationists. The notion of Democrats as victims of misty-eyed idealism should not be encouraged. There is a long and distinguished tradition of liberal foreign policy, both realistic and ambitious in its assessment of American power, and aware of the importance of liberty and prosperity abroad to security at home.
Craig Willy
Roquefort-Les-Pins, France

Church and State in the Gulf
I would certainly agree that more freedom for Christians in the Gulf states is a healthy development, but one should not be too optimistic about the long-term consequences ("The Changing Faiths of the Gulf," PERISCOPE, July 28). Unlike Christianity, Islam is historically linked with politics. However, the division between religious and political power in some countries, like France and the United States, does not apply to all countries even in the Western world. Certain monarchies in Europe still require that their head of state (the monarch) be a Protestant Christian. This requirement has lost its practical significance. The hope that the link between politics and religion will be diluted in Muslim countries may be overly optimistic at present.
Sverre Haukeland
Vasteras, Sweden