Barack v/s Obama

I am  quite befuddled by the entire hullabaloo that the US presidential campaign is creating. I, too, followed the democratic campaign quite closely this time around, and the reasons for this, apart from the fact that Indians have an almost voyeuristical obsession with USA, are two-fold:

1) When I was 12, the most incompetent President, in their history had taken over, from a very charming one. As my intellect developed (however little), I have seen this joke for a president, do nothing while his country was attacked, wage large scale wars, causing a massive genocide (consider only Iraq, here) and conjuring a miraculous second-term victory. He is the classical Anti-Forrest Gump (see anti-Christ).

This idiot has had a lot to do with shaping our generations’ political understanding. We deserved better. Since the last eight, very impressionable years, I have seen nothing but USA wage wars and kill and bully the world, making a mockery of the UN and the very Human Rights they so ardently champion.

2) The second reason was, the phenomenon of Barack Hussein Obama (It is strange, MS dictionary recognizes just Hussein, neither Barack nor Obama). His enthralling speeches, his underdog status, his racial (not racist) make-up and his meteoric rise through the ranks compelled me to follow him.

“America, our time has come”…, “We are the ones, we’ve been waiting for…” – Such oratory, in that deep voice and that conviction, made me believe, here was something different. Here’s why USA was at the top … it responded with this delight after the Bush disaster. Barack had gotten me, like million others, under his spell.

Barack Obama – Obama the Campaigner and Obama the President will be poles apart…

I got to know Barack rather well in the last 20 months, his impoverished and estranged brother, his philanthropic mum and his father, his years of struggle after graduation, his struggle to deal with his multiracial identity, the difficulty in coping with the loss of his father. I’ve seen him rise through his working class upbringing and getting in to Harward Law School, giving up a great job after graduating from Harward Law School and work for the poor in Chicago… his dates with Michelle… His entire journey has been shared with me, as part of his campaign. He truly is a remarkable person! Why wouldn’t you love this person! I’d have loved to have a brother, friend, father like Barack. On top of that, he admires, Mahatma Gandhi, even though I don’t give a damn about Thomas Jefferson or George Washington! He says, “Gandhi inspires me, and tells me, what ordinary people can do, when they come together…” I say Hallelujah!

It has been a long time, and Barack finds new ways to amaze me. But the campaign fatigue has got to me. And so has common sense. I’d be lying, if I didn’t admit that I got goose bumps, when he went on stage, in front of 80,000 people at the DNC to accept the presidential nomination… U2 was playing in the background as our Barack fulfilled his destiny! I don’t like these Conventions. They are way too gaudy, ornate and designed to deceive. Let the dust settle and our fairy tale disappears in thin air!

Wait till President Obama takes over. Obama has nothing new to offer, but prolonged, low-intensity war and a continuation of Republican policies in a milder form. President Obama would lose even his own respect, if he pulls troops out of Iraq right now, as he promises. From an American perspective, it would be a suicidal move. They have created a monster they can’t control and he can’t leave it in the open, before it is sedated. They just can’t win the war there and they can’t leave it either.

Here’s something interesting — When asked in Berlin by CNN’s Candy Crowley whether he believed the United States needed to apologise for anything over the past 7 ½ years in terms of foreign policy, candidate Obama responded, “No, I don’t believe in the U.S. apologising. As I said I think the war in Iraq was a mistake….” ^[1]

The world thinks otherwise Mr. Obama. But what can “President” Obama do? He needs the support of the Jewish lobby to win elections, as does any US president.

World affairs analyst for the Frontline, Vijay Prashad notes, quite objectively – IN the last few weeks of the gruelling primary campaign, Senator Barack Obama made two important visits. He spoke to the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) and to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)… To the Jewish American lobby in Chicago, Obama affirmed the “special relationship” between Washington and Tel Aviv, supporting Israel’s view of its relationship with its Arab neighbours and of the Occupation and going so far as to say that Jerusalem would remain the undivided capital of Israel. As the Democratic presidential nomination comes his way, Obama tacks right on foreign policy, to the dismay of many of his left-liberal allies. [2]

Not every country condones every action of Israel, India included. the country is unreasonably assertive, and has violated human rights for decades now.

In the meanwhile, market fundamentalists suffered a hard blow with the bankruptcy of Lehmann Bros. and the US financial crisis. The capitalist state is actually bailing out the businesses through tax payers’ money! This is sacrilege, in a market fundamentalist economy, which prides itself on fiscal prudence and constraints on government spending. There will be regulation now or “common sense” regulation, as he calls it. But isn’t Mr. Obama forgetting something?

Vijay Prashad reminds us here — Obama rightly raised the problem of deregulation but his history was truncated. Saying that this is a problem of the George W. Bush administration (the “last eight years”) exculpates his own party’s role over the past several decades in the evisceration of the New Deal. It was during the Bill Clinton administration that the pillars of regulation came down and freed up investment banks to operate with minimal supervision.[3]

There isn’t even the tiniest scope of ideological predilection in his observations. What else, will the Liberal Obama achieve during his tenure? Will he be able to legalize same-sex weddings? No, the Orthodox Christian lobby is too strong. Will he be able to make healthcare affordable beyond doubt, for the retirees, nurse and teachers, whom he always mentions in his speeches? No, market forces and profit motives need to be considered. Will he stop outsourcing, and give those jobs to Americans? He already said that this is an irreversible process of Globalization… Will he conclusively settle the abortion debate? Not if he wants a second term.

Oh, and yes, admiring Gandhi and ratifying “unilateral actions”, which in India we call “Bombing a country without international permission”, is like being a white supremacist and admiring Martin Luther King. We know you want to appease Indians, Mr. Obama, if we were so dumb, outsourcing would not have been an issue!

Maybe, healthcare will improve a tad bit, maybe education will be made more affordable for sometime, but this is not the change, for which thousands of people in Berlin come to hear Mr. Obama or lakhs in India wake up early to catch the live speeches.

Our dear Barack is amazing, everyone loves him, but Senator Obama will be (He hasn’t won as yet) just a run-of-the-mill American President. With many groups to appease, with a billion balancing acts to perform, with a few swing states to win and maintaining US dominance in the world, just or unjust. It’s a shame Barack loses out to Sen. Obama… Barack would have been a great President…

References:

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2518/stories/20080912251805900.htm – Understanding Barack Obama, Mark Herold

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2513/stories/20080704251304300.htm – Swinging states of America, Vijay Prashad

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2521/stories/20081024252105900.htm – Of the same feather, Vijay Prashad