"LUCKY TO BE AN AMERICAN"

 "I grew up with many of these fears imprinted on me," writes Barack Obama.

"In Hawaii, I knew families who'd lost loved ones at Pearl Harbor. My grandfather, his brother, and my grandmother's brother had all fought in World War II.  I was raised believing that nuclear war was a very real possibility. In grade school, I watched coverage of Olympic athletes being slaughtered by masked men in Munich;  in college I listened to Ted Koppel marking the number of days Americans were being held hostage in Iran. Too young to have known the anguish of Vietnam firsthand, I had witnessed only the honor and restraint of our service members during the Gulf War, and like most Americans I viewed our military operations in Afghanistan after 9/11 as both necessary and just.

But another set of stories had also been etched into me--different though not contradictory--about what America meant to those living in the world beyond it, the symbolic power of a country built upon the ideals of freedom. I remember being seven or eight years old and sitting on the cool floor tiles of our house on the outskirts of Jakarta, proudly showing my friends a picture book of Honolulu with its high-rises and city lights and wide, paved roads. I would never forget the wonder in their faces as I answered their questions about life in America, explaining how everybody got to go to school with plenty of books, and there were no beggars because most everyone had a job and enough to eat. later, as a young man, I witnessed my mother's impact as a contractor with organizations like USAID, helping women in remote Asian villages get access to credit, and the lasting gratitude those women felt that Americans an ocean away actually cared about their plight. When I first visited Kenya, I sat with newfound relatives who told me how much they admired American democracy and rule of law--a contrast, they said, to the tribalism and corruption that plague their country,

Such moments taught me to see my country through the eyes of others. I was reminded how lucky I was to be an American, to take none of these blessings for granted. I saw first hand the power of our example exerted on the hearts and minds of people around the world. But with that came a corollary lesson: an awareness of what we risked when our actions failed to live up to our image and our ideals, the anger and resentment this could breed, the damage that was done. When I heard Indonesians talk about the hundreds of thousands slaughtered in a coup--widely believed to have CIA backing--that had brought a military dictatorship to power in 1967, or listened to Latin American environmental activists detailing how  U.S, companies were befouling their countryside, or commiserating with Indian American or Pakistani American friends as they chronicled the countless times that they'd been pulled aside for 'random' searches at airports since 9/11. I felt America's defenses weakening, saw chinks in the  armor that I was sure over time made our country less safe,

That dual vision, as much as my skin color, distinguished me from previous presidents. For my supporters, it was a defining foreign  policy strength ... For my detractors, it was evidence of weakness..." (409/410 A PROMISED LAND, Barack Obama  

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