Letter to the Editor: Listening to Obama’s Message in Cairo

The New York Times

June 6, 2009

By James Adler, Boston Chapter

To the Editor:
 
Re “Addressing Muslims, a Blunt Obama Takes On Mideast Issues” (front page, June 5):

The world’s eyes and ears on Cairo underscores how President Obama has given us the gift of a new and unique opportunity — one that only a year ago seemed like a fantasy — to reorient America as a peaceful citizen of the planet we seem to have rejoined at last.

President Obama has “pressed the reset button,” as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton did with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov of Russia, and our return from the wilderness could help bring the Israelis and the Palestinians closer to peace and reconciliation — and underneath all restore those Western-Islamic relations that have so heavily burdened the second half of the last century and especially the beginning of the new one.

No wonder Al Qaeda fears and hates President Obama. And no wonder, even after the new millennium started with an unexpected nightmare, it seems we can at least dream, after all, that our and the Middle East’s and world’s children might grow up to better lives.

We can never of course get back to the world of Sept. 10, 2001, but with lots of determination — and luck — our president may eventually return us closer to that place than we had ever dared to hope.

James Adler
Cambridge, Mass., June 5, 2009