Washington matters

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The 4 November US elections are less than a week away and we have every reason to care. If the local press coverage or editorials are anything to go by, we are finally giving it the importance it deserves. And it seems we're quite charmed by Democratic Senator Barack Hussein Obama for reasons that are both pragmatic and, perhaps, emotional.

Obama invokes "change", which has become a powerful word in today's world, and not just for Americans. If elected, Obama will be the first African American president since America was founded in 1776, which is a historic change in itself. And after eight years of living and dying under the George W Bush doctrine, Americans and the rest of the world want to see "change" in Washington, even if it is symbolic more than it is genuine.

In this part of the world, never has a US president had a more detrimental impact on our political landscape than Bush and his neocon administration. Despite the fact that Bush's entire neocon team had been planning the war on Iraq long before he became president (indeed, ever since the end of the first Gulf war of 1990- 1991), he alone is widely blamed for the destruction of what was once a powerful oil-rich country with one of the highest literacy rates in the Arab world. But prior to Bush, it was during the last two years of the Republican administration of George H W Bush, then continued under Democratic President Bill Clinton, that cruel economic sanctions were imposed on Iraq, systematically dismantling the country over 12 years.

This is but one example of how Republicans and Democrats share common goals, even if in rhetoric they differ. And yet we are infatuated by Obama. Despite his many Republican-style views expressed during the presidential campaign, we like him. World polls testify to the global approval afforded him. And according to an online poll conducted by The Economist, 91 per cent of Egyptians would choose Obama if they were to vote in the elections. Still, Obama has vowed to escalate the US war on Afghanistan and to attack Pakistan if it stands in the way of a unilateral US mission to kill Osama bin Laden. And worse, he promises to wage war on terror in a hundred countries. Further, his would-be vice-president Joe Biden calls himself a "Zionist" and is largely viewed as Israel's best friend in the Senate.

If he is elected, Obama will face difficult times: living up to his promises for change, addressing the world financial crisis, and more importantly repositioning the United States from its likely regression as the world's superpower. These are not entirely domestic issues. According to Nobel Prize laureate in economics Joseph Stiglitz, the war on Iraq has cost $3 trillion so far. How is that for a major blow to the US economy which is faltering now, only to reverberate across the globe -- thanks to globalisation -- and end up here, in Egypt, as it has elsewhere. Egyptian pundits are already warning of the worst as the economic crises hits harder at home.

As a US ally, Egypt's foreign policy -- towards the invasion of Iraq, Israel's war on Lebanon, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- has been questioned by many. Domestically, Cairo's 2005 "Spring of Democracy" came at a time when the Bush administration was pushing for democratic change. And today our economy awaits the repercussions of the US financial crisis. Although we are far from effectively placing ourselves in the US election campaign (as opposed to the Jewish lobby, for example), the past eight years have been living proof of how the person in the Oval Office affects us. The new administration might herald winds of change indeed. But isn't it about time we changed and took back some of our cards that lie in America's hands?