Our Changing Globe

Posts Tagged ‘America’

As we now all know or should do by now, President Obama is an Afro-American, the son of a Muslim father and a one-time resident of Indochina which is predominantly Muslim.

The upside to this of course is that it makes it much more difficult for the Islamic world to typecast him as a son of the “Great Satan” especially because his middle name is Hussein.

Rightly or wrongly however, President Barack Obama is getting a lot of praise heaped on him right now by much of the Muslim world because he chose the Saudi-owned Arabic TV news channel Al-Arabiya on which to make his first formal television interview.

So what’s wrong with that?

Well when you give interviews to foreigners that are basically hostile to your country it’s probably not a great idea to firstly criticize your own country and secondly praise the one that despises you, but that is what Obama basically did.

He said,

“All too often the United States starts by dictating and in the past on some of these issues we didn’t always know all the factors that were involved. So let’s listen. Well, here’s what I think is important. Look at the proposal that was put forth by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. I might not agree with every aspect of the proposal, but it took great courage to put forward something that is as significant as that. I think that there are ideas across the region of how we might pursue peace”.

The U.S. was previously dictatorial and the Saudi king had been courageous.

Obama went on to say,

“But if you look at the track record, as you say, America was not born as a colonial power, and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there’s no reason why we can’t restore that. And that I think is going to be an important task. So what we want to do is to listen, set aside some of the preconceptions that have existed and have built up over the last several years. And I think if we do that, then there’s a possibility at least of achieving some breakthroughs. But I think that what you’ll see is somebody who is listening, who is respectful, and who is trying to promote the interests not just of the United States, but also ordinary people who right now are suffering from poverty and a lack of opportunity. I want to make sure that I’m speaking to them, as well”.

So even though America did the following praiseworthy things Obama gave the impression to haters of the U.S. that America had only been bad!

” American saved Kuwait.
” Spoke out against Russia on behalf of the Chechens.
” Tried to save the Somalis.
” Bombed, Christian European Serbia to save the Kosovan and Bosnian Muslims.
” Helped the Afghans fight the Soviets.
” Is still fighting the Taliban.
” Overthrew Saddam Hussein and is still fighting in Iraq.
” Invested billions fighting disease in Africa much of which is Muslim.
” Aided tsunami victims.

And the list goes on and on and Bush can list many things to his credit.

” The U.S. was not hit by terrorists for seven years.
” Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation was stopped.
” Libya gave up its nuclear program.
” Syria mostly left Lebanon.
” Al Qaeda’s leadership is scattered and less effective.

Throughout the almost two years of political campaigning it was tacitly understood that mentioning Obama’s ancestry and middle name were off-limits.

Obama however does not feel himself limited by this tacit understanding,

“Now, my job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries. The largest one, Indonesia. And so what I want to communicate is the fact that in all my travels throughout the Muslim world, what I’ve come to understand is that regardless of your faith, and America is a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers, that regardless of your faith, people all have certain common hopes and common dreams.

The bottom line is that Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush all tried hard to promote peace in the Middle East but amongst the major obstacles to peace are religious intolerance, illiberality, violent aggression and complicity in the promotion of terror by Syria, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

The above mentioned countries know only too well the role that they’ve played for their own political reasons and Obama knows it too but he has already set out to placate them with the downside being that he will mostly likely make a bad situation far worse.

For at least five years, I have told people that capitalism would soon collapse but was nearly always mockingly asked, “and what will replace it?”, to which I had and still have no real answer.

I did, and do know however that you can’t base an economy on debt and expect it to last and that is exactly what the U.S. economy is based on.

Just today I read that California is 42 billion dollars in debt and yes you read that right, billion and not million.

Many people find Barak Obama charismatic which I personally don’t but I do believe that he is very smart.

But is he smart enough to save capitalism?

In January, Obama will gain the authority to run the government of the United States of America, but its presidents cannot simply remain charismatic symbols but must also tackle its problems and America and the world have many of them right now.

When Obama began his journey to the presidency, the war in Iraq was first and foremost in a great many people’s minds but that is no longer the case and he will be judged by how he handles the world’s economic crisis.

The U.S. is still by far the biggest driving force behind the world’s economy so Obama’s first task will be to restore confidence to Americans who are deeply pessimistic about their near future!

People are not borrowing and most financial institutions aren’t lending and if that doesn’t change then the economy is doomed as perhaps it was from its inception?!

Simply exuding confidence will not be enough regardless of how much charisma you have and Obama may be forced to reform the system itself.

In recent months the U.S. government has taken on a huge number of obligations in the private sector …

Ownership in banks.

Guarantees of commercial debts.

And loans to the automobile industry.

Sadly and perhaps most seriously no exit strategy exists and the Obama administration will have to find one because that is exactly what it will be judged on!