Dear Undecideds...

Tarmilat Elder and Student
Originally uploaded by paynehollow

A letter to undecided Americans, from a dear sister in Morocco:

In the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco, where there are more sheep than automobiles, you might think elections happening in America, half a world away, might hold little interest for ordinary people. But you would be wrong. I know more Moroccans than Americans here who got up at 3:00 in the morning our time to watch the last debate. Even shepherds in the village of Tarmilat (population 120) ask me who I’m voting for.

I recently took a group of visiting Americans to that village to see a women’s weaving project Americans and Moroccans worked together to create. The women graciously received their guests, displaying looms and rugs, serving tea and fried bread. As we looked out over the sheepfolds and the rolling hills, a car with a blaring loudspeaker passed below us on a dirt road. “Elections,” I explained, meaning local elections. One young man commented, derisively, “I bet these people are for Obama.”

His words angered me. They felt egocentric, assuming that ours were the elections in question, and prejudicial, presuming that “these people” would all automatically prefer a candidate he clearly disliked. Did he mean that Arabs wanted Obama because Obama has been accused of having terrorist links, and for him Arabs were terrorists? Was it because the shepherds are dark-skinned? Was it because they are poor?

But he’s right about one thing: the vast majority of Moroccans hope that Obama will be America’s next president, not because they are terrorists (they aren’t, just as Obama isn’t), and not primarily because of their skin-color or poverty. Moroccans want Obama to be president because they realize our world desperately needs change, and much depends on the course the US will now choose to take, for Morocco and the world.

Morocco was the first country to recognize the sovereignty of the United States in 1777 and is still a significant ally of the US in the Arab world. Morocco supported America’s war on terror from the start. But the war in Iraq and the death of countless Iraqi civilians, with subsequent images of Abu Ghraib and the revelation that the CIA operates secret prisons here, all this has caused America to lose all credibility in this part of the world and beyond. The radical change in what America symbolizes is hard for Americans in the USA to understand, but it is obvious to those of us who have lived overseas through the transition: America has become the occupying enemy, the oppressor, the evil empire in people’s minds.

Americans may ask, “Why should we care what they think about us?” 9-11 is one answer. Al-Qaeda may well have been carrying out its own suicide mission in 9-11, attacking the US to intentionally provoke a precipitous response of such overwhelming force as to, perhaps, annihilate the Al-Qaeda organization while at the same time creating a generation of bitterly angry and resentful young men and women around the world who will rise up to take up the mantle of anti-American hatred and violence. We squandered all the good will the world felt for us after 9-11 and turned it into a groundswell of malice.

This has hurt not only America, but also Morocco and other nations allied to the US who find their populations becoming increasingly disapproving of their country’s support of the American agenda. Supporting the US provides fuel for the fire of radical elements in the region. Unwise US foreign policy puts the security of its allies at risk.

If Moroccans support Obama, it is for the very same reason that I, as an American do: We see in Obama a chance for America to regain its integrity and stature on the world stage, to use its might and influence to lead the world as a member of the community of nations, to further America’s interests along with the interests of the rest of the world, not at the expense of the rest of the world.

A McCain presidency would only deepen the despair, resentment, and hostility the image of America currently evokes around the world. And we would all suffer the consequences.

But there is an alternative: Barack (which means “blessing”) Obama.

Karen Thomas Smith grew up in Lebanon Junction and Owensboro and is a graduate of Georgetown College. She serves as Christian Chaplain at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco.