Indonesia: President Obama's Speech at the University of Indonesia

On Wednesday, Nov 10, 2010, President Barack Obama made a long awaited visit to Indonesia. President Obama spent four years of his childhood in Indonesia with his mother and Indonesian stepfather and attended an elementary school in Jakarta from the years 1967-1971. While President Obama was in Indonesia he met with President Yudhoyono, visited the largest Mosque in Asia, and delivered a speech at the University of Indonesia about the relevance of international ties between the US and Indonesia. Thanks to an entirely impulsive single phone call to the US Embassy made by a fellow Fulbrighter consisting of the request, "We want tickets to see President Obama," several ETAs, their students and I were able to attend his speech at the University of Indonesia. I won't go into specific details or my personal political opinion about his speech, but I will say it was an amazing experience, almost surreal. This was not one of the things I imagined myself doing when I came to Indonesia. President Obama is a great public speaker to say the least, and although his speech was rather short (about 30 minutes), it effectively presented goals and ideas concerning the future of international relationships between Indonesia and the US and why such goals and aspirations are relevant. He focused on three areas: development, democracy, and religion. He covered these topics not very much in depth, and as I mentioned before the speech was rather short. However, I believe President Obama executed the speech in a manner most suitable to appeal to his venue, which was mostly an audience of Indonesian college and high school students and did a wonderful job overall and was very well received by his audience. Although many Indonesians like President Obama and even feel they have a special bond to him because of the fact that he has lived in Indonesia, his presence did not come without some criticism. As we were leaving the speech we saw groups of protestors along the roads, not violent but vocal. I do not know the exact reasons of their protest, but I was told many Indonesians disagree with Obama sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, though he has removed over 100,000 troops and is actively ending the war in the Middle East. Either way, with any position of power comes criticism of one's actions, regardless of what the true intentions of these actions are. To be able to see President Obama, a human I greatly admire, deliver such as important speech was truly an incredible experience and just one of the many I am very thankful for here in Indonesia.