Mid East expert: Obama part of cure

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http://www.newbritainherald.com/articles/2009/04/24/news/doc49f2736bacfb1922988880.txt

Tareq Ismael, author and expert on the Middle East, sounded a note of optimism about the Obama administration and “the good will the new president has produced by his recent trips abroad.”

According to Ismael, President George W. Bush was “a blip in the American political process,” but under president Obama “America can rebuild an international order on a wave of optimism.”

Speaking by telephone from Washington, D.C., Friday, the Iraqi native and professor of political science at the University of Calgary in Canada, reflected on his Monday talk at Central Connecticut State University. As Middle East lecture series speaker, he offered a prescription for the “ills caused by the U.S. intervention in Iraq.”

To him, America’s new president is part of the cure.

Ismael cited three “positives” about Obama.

“First,” said Ismael, “he is not Bush, which was a curse. Second, he is very intelligent, someone with international stature, which America desperately needs. Finally, as a statesman Obama has the aura of a movie star — it seems to radiate from him.”