who are living through the arab spring every day, day to day, want to hear from president obama this morning? want to check in with nbc chief foreign correspondent richard engle live for us in cairo. this country's approach to violence against protesters in libya and syria hasn't been identical. what's the message to these nations? it's still more of the every country has a different approach from this obama administration. >> reporter: what i think people are looking to hear in this part of the world are really two things -- strong condemnations of syria for its crackdown against demonstrators, a crackdown which has killed hundreds of people, at least 800 according to human rights groups, seeing about 10,000 people arrested in the past two months. and they typically want to see strong action taken against the syrian regime to isolate it. they also would like to see concrete steps to restart the arab-israeli peace process. not just the peace process between israel and the