We arrived in Phnom Penh on a hot and sticky afternoon, hungry and tired after a long day at the Saigon and Phnom Penh airports. We asked our guide, Thin, to take us to a good restaurant with a view of the Tonle Sap River, and we wound up at Ponlok Restaurant.
The staff was exuberant and friendly, several of them hovering around our table and pampering us: refilling water glasses, rubbing our shoulders, wiping our sweaty brows with towels dipped in ice water. Then Mom got out her Polaroid camera, and they went nuts. Everyone wanted a picture, and within a minute there were 15 employees crowded around our table, with other tourists nearby getting up to take pictures of the commotion we were causing.
They asked our ages and we told them, then we asked all of their ages. Every person in these photographs said they were between 19 and 22 years old. When we finished eating, they cheered and clapped as we left, and begged us to come back the next day. Several of them insisted on carrying my camera gear to the car and helping Mom down the steps.
In the time since 9/11, America's spending on non-military foreign aid has dropped to its lowest point since World War II, less than .2 percent of GDP. While fewer Americans now go overseas to share our knowledge of agriculture, health care, and industry, increasing numbers of Americans now go overseas with guns, mostly to attack or threaten the people of poor countries. And not coincidentally, the popularity of Americans is dropping rapidly around the world.
If my Mom were President we'd have some serious problems, but that wouldn't be one of them.