Bono Writes A Love Letter To America

International philanthropist Bono wrote an op-ed for today’s New York Times on why Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and what it means to the rest of the world:

Well, I happen to be European, and I can project with the best of them. So here’s why I think the virtual Obama is the real Obama, and why I think the man might deserve the hype. It starts with a quotation from a speech he gave at the United Nations last month:

“We will support the Millennium Development Goals, and approach next year’s summit with a global plan to make them a reality. And we will set our sights on the eradication of extreme poverty in our time.”

[…]

But an America that’s tired of being the world’s policeman, and is too pinched to be the world’s philanthropist, could still be the world’s partner. And you can’t do that without being, well, loved. Here come the letters to the editor, but let me just say it: Americans are like singers — we just a little bit, kind of like to be loved. The British want to be admired; the Russians, feared; the French, envied. (The Irish, we just want to be listened to.) But the idea of America, from the very start, was supposed to be contagious enough to sweep up and enthrall the world.

And it is. The world wants to believe in America again because the world needs to believe in America again. We need your ideas — your idea — at a time when the rest of the world is running out of them.

Read the whole thing, if you can. The world wants and needs American leadership back. Leadership in the true sense, which is bringing everyone together to work for a common goal that is in everyone’s own interest, not the bullying, short-sighted America of the Bush administration. Sometimes it takes an outsider to state things clearly. The world needs America and America needs the world. I hope Obama is successful at bringing the world together to solve our global problems, they are so numerous and help is urgently needed in some areas.