President Obama: A war-time president?

I was watching President Obama on television yesterday and a feeling came to me, that bubbled up into a thought: that this president could be a man on the level of FDR, should we find ourselves in the unsavory position of being entangled in a war. It is precisely because of his inclination to be very cautious about our nation being mired in an unwise conflict -- recall that as a state senator in 2002, he was quite vocal in his opposition to the call for war in Iraq -- that he is particularly well-suited to leading our nation in a time of war.

His popularity around the world is unparalleled in the history of our nation, because not only is he favorable to our traditional allies, the Europeans, but his Kenyan ancestry makes the peoples of Africa more disposed to him than any other American president heretefore, and his experience growing up in the largest Muslim nation in the world (Indonesia), gives him some "street cred" with Muslims that no other American president has ever had.

He is uniquely qualified, in a way that no other American president has been, to unify people across the world, because he has the inclined ears of more people of the world than any other American president.

Unfortunately, that also increases his threat profile to the many oppressors and tyrants who still exploit masses of people and benefit from injustice -- Kim Jong Ill in South Korea, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, al-Bashir in Sudan -- and to the religious fanatical terrorists like Osama Bin Laden. It's not that these people are alone have enough power on their own (we hope not at least) to bring down the world, but the question is, if the going gets tough, are we going to be able to count on Russia and China, or will they see an opportunity for a superpower play?