Goodbye Great Satan?

During the 2008 election, one of the news commentators said that people in the Middle East would not know how to deal with someone named Barack Hussein Obama. A president by that name would make them stop and wonder.

According to a recent report in the Boston Globe, http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2009/02/11/gentler_approach_challenges_anti_us_regimes_analysts_say/, that is exactly what is happening.

“The new American president, who has tried to strike a more conciliatory tone toward some of America’s most intractable adversaries, may be making inroads into reducing anti-American feeling in some distant corner of the globe,” wrote Globe reporter Bryan Bender.
Adversaries such as North Korea, Venezuela, Hammas, Iran, and even Al Qaeda, Bender said, are all having a problem with Obama.

“They all feel threatened by a Barack Obama,” Hady Amr, director of the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar, told Bender. “They worry that Barack Obama will erode their base.”
This isn’t all roses. Bender noted several specialists who worry that a growing feeling of vulnerability might force anti-American leaders to act out.

Still, the prospect of an American president who does not act like a “Great Satan” may be a blow to the terror groups who can no longer point to an American enemy.

Time will tell. The United States has to walk the walk toward peace.