Pakistani students resist global favourite Obama: Daily Times

* Students at two top universities term Democratic presidential hopeful ‘too aggressive’, ‘irresponsible’, ‘enemy of Muslims’
* Say Obama’s stance on Pakistan ‘even more dangerous than George W Bush’

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama may be winning in the United States and most global popularity polls, but he is a loser in Pakistan, Washington Times reported on Tuesday.

Aggressive:

Dozens of students interviewed at two top universities in Lahore rejected Obama as ‘too aggressive’, ‘irresponsible’ and an ‘enemy of Muslims’, whose stated policy toward insurgency-plagued areas would make a bad situation worse.

The anti-Obama sentiments stem from assertions on the campaign trail that the senator from Illinois, if elected president, would authorise US forces to enter Pakistani territory to hunt down the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

“The only country he's talking about bombing today is us,” said Sher Afghen Malik, a political science major at the University of the Punjab, to the approving nods of classmates. “How could we possibly support him?”

Dangerous: Khansa Qamar, a member of the school's model United Nations club, said her peers perceive Obama “as even more dangerous than George W Bush” with regard to his stance on Pakistan.

By a show of hands, not one among the two-dozen students in one class supported the Democratic candidate. A little more than half said they prefer Senator John McCain because the Republican presidential candidate's statements on Pakistan have been less pointed.

Obama’s comments set Pakistan's media machine on spin cycle, hardening the views of many people who otherwise had been supportive of him, said Khalid Butt, a political science instructor at Government College in Lahore.

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