Worldwide response positive to Bush era’s demise

Twenty months ago, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez joked about U.S. President George W. Bush’s popularity in the U.S. dropping below 30 percent. “Outside the United States,” Chávez added, “Bush’s popularity rating is probably negative.” (workers.org, March 13, 2007)

Now the mostly positive reaction of people all over the Earth to the news that Barack Hussein Obama was elected president of the United States has proved Chávez’s comment was more than a joke. Most people in the world identified the African-American Obama as the negation of Bush and made him their favorite.

An unscientific but still interesting straw poll run by the conservative British magazine The Economist counted 85 percent of about 50,000 people polled worldwide as choosing Obama over John McCain.

Not surprisingly, a center of worldwide enthusiasm was in Kenya, where Obama’s father was born. There from Nov. 4 to Nov. 8, “43 children born at the Nyanza Provincial Hospital in Kisumu were named after the Obamas, with 23 boys given the first and middle name Barack Obama and 20 girls named Michelle Obama.” (New York Times, Nov. 9)

The worldwide media—including the corporate media—greeted Obama’s election with big photos of the president-elect and generally favorable coverage. One of the websites that follow Obama’s life published photos of these front pages from Indonesia to Pakistan to Palestine to South Africa and Brazil. They celebrated not only the end of the Bush era, but the historic election of someone of African origin, with a Muslim middle name, to what is considered the most powerful elected position in the world.

Governments of countries that have been a target of U.S. economic and political subversion and war threats reacted to the change by requesting new diplomatic moves.

From Venezuela, Chávez congratulated Obama on his “historic” win and called for new relations between the countries, according to a Venezuelan Foreign Ministry statement.

“The historic election of an Afro-descendent to the head of the most powerful nation in the world is the symptom that the epochal change that South America has initiated could be knocking on the door of the United States,” the statement read.

From Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad congratulated Obama on his election victory and said, “It is expected that fundamental and clear changes will be made in Washington’s foreign and domestic policies, as demanded by all nations and the American people.” (Tehran Times, Nov. 6)

The Political Council of the Iraqi Resistance, which is associated with the Islamic Army, one of a few major Iraqi armed resistance groups, wrote an open letter to Obama. It credited the strong anti-Bush feelings in the U.S. population for Obama’s election and offered to negotiate an orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq so long as the U.S. doesn’t attempt to keep the puppet politicians in a liberated Iraq and includes reparations for all the damage the U.S. invasion and occupation have done to the Iraqi people.

From statements from political groups and from the street—the latter reported in the corporate media—it appears that people in the Middle East are most skeptical that the change in the U.S. presidency represents a real change in direction in U.S. policies. This was especially true in reports from Iraq and Palestine.

Popular support in Europe

This past summer, the rally in Berlin where 200,000 listened to Obama speak in the German capital made it clear there was broad popular support for him in Europe. In addition, most of the corporate media were positive to enthusiastic about Obama throughout the campaign. They pointed to a possible Obama victory as a sign that the United States could change its ways after eight years of Bush’s arrogant aggressive policies.

Only the most rightist European parties, especially the far right in Eastern Europe, openly supported McCain. Centrist and social democratic parties backed Obama, increasing their support as he gained in the polls. Even the conservative Economist magazine, which backed Bush in 2000, this time threw its full editorial support behind Obama.

The European “Center-Left”—which is now close to the U.S. Democratic Party in its overall policies and has opposed Bush since his administration—made it clear with the 2003 U.S.-British invasion of Iraq that it would order U.S. unilateral military moves without heeding advice from the European leaders. Then the German, French and other Western European governments backed away from the invasion.

In contrast, under Democratic President Bill Clinton, the NATO powers acting together waged an aggressive war under U.S. leadership against Yugoslavia in 1999.

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