Our Standing In The World: Another Reason An Obama Presidency Matters

From Dailykos.com:

November 4, 2008

My dear friends,

Today I have had to travel from the island of Borneo...from SABAH and the town of Kota Kinabalu.  Then to Kualam Lumpur where I had a 5 hour lay over and finally arriving very late at night in Bangkok.  The election has already begun....

Today, in honor of the election, I am wearing an Obama '08 button on my lapel.  If the treatment and reaction throughout my day is any indication of what our world might become....I am overwhelmed with optimism.  First, every single place I went, someone noticed the button and called out, "OBAMA!".  There were international administrators from across the region at the Hotel.  Many of them nodded and smiled, an

d even the non-Americans who reacted with huge enthusiasm.  One man from Australia stopped me to talk politics for 10 minutes.  The crew working behind the desk all gave a thumbs up...the taxi driver did not charge me for taking me to the airport.

From the LA Times:

If history records a sudden surge in carbon emissions on Wednesday, it may be due to the collective exhalation of relief and joy by the hundreds of millions -- perhaps billions -- of people around the globe who watched, waited and prayed for Barack Obama to be elected president of the United States.

In country after country, elation over Obama's victory was palpable, the hunger for a change of American leadership as strong outside the U.S. as in it. And there was wonderment that, in the world's most powerful democracy, a man with African roots and the middle name Hussein, an upstart fighter who took on political heavyweights, could capture the highest office in the land.

And, finally, this:

Obama Victory Alters the Tenor of Iraqi Politics

NY Times: BAGHDAD — Barack Obama may have been elected only three days ago, but his victory is already beginning to shift the political ground in Iraq and the region.

Iraqi Shiite politicians are indicating that they will move faster toward a new security agreement about American troops, and a Bush administration official said he believed that Iraqis could ratify the agreement as early as the middle of this month.

“Before, the Iraqis were thinking that if they sign the pact, there will be no respect for the schedule of troop withdrawal by Dec. 31, 2011,” said Hadi al-Ameri, a powerful member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a major Shiite party. “If Republicans were still there, there would be no respect for this timetable. This is a positive step to have the same theory about the timetable as Mr. Obama.”