Worldwide response positive to Bush era’s demise
By
John Catalinotto
Published Nov 14, 2008 8:45 PM
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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