The Problem with Obama, 28th July 2009

The Problem with Obama, published 28/7/2009 on MySpace.

The relevance of this after so long appears after reading Chris Hedges... on truthdig

The greatest problem the World faces today is the resolution of the East-West divide.

I recall Tony Blairs congratulatory message that he sent to President George W. Bush on his re-election, Mr Blair lauded Mr Bush as a unifying force in a divided World. Off course the pair of them destroyed the credibility of the one organisation that was capable of really being seen as a unifying force for the World, the U.N. But irrespective of Mr Tony Blairs spin, his words underlie a sentiment that he must have keenly felt: a divided World.

At the root of our divided World, is not a Chinese Bird Cage but rather an unholy Jerusalem.

The Middle East is so vitally important for our divided World, not just because it straddles the East and the West, but because more importantly 1 in 4 of the World’s population are Muslims.

And then we had Obama.

Just today I am returning from staying 2 weeks in Mombasa with my in-laws. Blogging on a plane is off course one of my most beautiful past-times.

Obama is Kenya’s favourite son, precisely because his father was Kenyan. And so on his election to the office of the US Presidency, Kenya celebrated with a 2-day National Holiday. Mombasa has also honoured Obama by naming the important thoroughfare that connects Mombasa town to Moi International Airport after him: Barrack Obama Avenue. And yet there, I learned that Obama had vowed not to enter into Kenya until it puts an end to corruption. Laudable sentiments indeed.

Off course the seriousness of our divided World has attracted less laudable sentiments, and more telling actions from Obama.

The tragedy that was and is today’s Gaza has been forgotten by most of us. But Palestine and Gaza are more relevant to World Unity than ever before. Israel invaded and decimated Gaza on the pretext of stopping the Gazan rocket attacks into their territory. Gazan’s themselves began these token/ ineffectual attacks as a means of trying to the end the year long blockade that Israel had wantonly imposed on them because they sought to elect Hamas as their political broker and representative on the international scene. Off course time and again throughout the Muslim World the people, who represent the people that matter, are ignored, pressurized and demonized. Obama is no different; even he cannot swallow the bitter pill of democracy within the Middle East.

 

And while Gazans suffered innumerable war crimes, and continue to suffer under an illegal blockade that prevents them rebuilding let alone coming to terms with the great loss of civilian lives that they have been made to suffer, Obama turns a blind eye.

 

Worse still Obama then rubs salt into our still fresh wounds.

For complicit in the massacre that was Gaza, and in their continued suffering, is Egypt. And what better place to extend a hand of friendship, an olive branch of Peace to the Muslim World, than in the place through which Israel still continues to exert it’s most greatest oppression of the Palestinian people. 

 

That speech may have been well written and performed, but taking place in close proximity to the tragedy that is Gaza whilst seeking to ignore and belittle its significance says much, much more.

 

Kenyans should be happy with Obama’s, impossible but nevertheless laudable, insistence on it’s being corruption free. The World should be much less so with Obama’s misguided wish to heal a broken World by ignoring its most recent victims.