Praising American presidents has not been quite my forte! However, I celebrated Obama’s Presidential victory wholeheartedly (read my editorial in The Sunday Indian, issue dated November 9, 2008) because I almost believed that he held a promise that American presidents in the past have rarely held! He really could have been the change the world was waiting for. Recession had shown its ugly face once more in the greedy capitalist world and Bush had left a near criminal legacy behind. There was no better a time for Obama to prove his worth. But forget bringing the world out of recession, Obama has not even been able to do anything to bring the USA out of recession! Of course, if we were to believe the Nobel Committee and its choice for the Nobel Prize in Economics this year, then there is nothing wrong with the capitalist system and nothing much to be done at all but match the existing unemployment with the existing jobs vacant in various companies! Ludicrous... just like their Peace Prize to Obama was!
Obama’s campaign was all about “Yes, we can!” The truth is he hasn’t accomplished much of what he had promised – especially during his election campaign. Among his other failures, he has failed to keep one of his key promises – on closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison, and also on providing relief for illegal immigrants. Even after a year, Gitmo is still active; and no concrete steps have been crafted for illegal migrants. What is now a global joke is that his promises of closing Gitmo and solving other human rights issues were part of the parcel that won him the coveted Nobel Peace Prize!
It was Obama who initiated talks on global warming and announced his plans to organise a series of climate talks. Back in 2008, Obama had projected himself as a “citizen of the world”. But then, this same Obama, the perceived harbinger of optimism, now blames developing nations for global warming! This reminds me of President George W. Bush who, during his tenure, discarded the Kyoto Protocol on similar grounds. In similar manner, during a State-of-the-Union speech on January 27, 2010, Obama promised something that is quite the opposite of what he had stood for in his campaign days. Instead of talking about green jobs and climate change policy, he discussed his plans on nuclear power, oil, gas, coal and bio-fuels! That’s change indeed!
Nobel laureate Obama’s biggest global failure has perhaps been regarding the Iraq and Afghan issue, where he had committed during a formal announcement of a new Iraq strategy at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, on February 27, 2009, that “under the new plan, the US will remove all combat troops (from Iraq) by August 31, 2010.” Systematically delaying the troops’ withdrawal has been akin to breaking the promise. Similarly, Obama still is to remove his troops from Afghanistan – where there is blatant genocide being carried out under the garb of a peace process – and is finding all possible excuses to stay back. One wonders if the Nobel Peace Prize winner is actually unable to shift out of Afghanistan due to the $1 trillion worth mineral wealth in the land! The mother of all disasters in terms of doing the opposite of peace though is that, on October 25, 2010, the Obama administration ‘waived’ off sections of a law meant to prevent the recruitment of child soldiers in Africa, thus making it easier for countries in the dark continent to make use of underage troops. In a memorandum to Hillary Clinton, he wrote, “I hereby determine that it is in the national interest of the United States to waive the application to Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Yemen of the prohibition in section 404(a) of the [Child Service Prevention Act]”. And for records, recruiting underage soldiers is a human rights abuse in most of the nations. Even Noam Chomsky stated in an interview last month that President Obama “is involved in war crimes right now. For example, targeted assassinations are war crimes. That’s escalated quite sharply under Obama. If you look at WikiLeaks, there are a lot of examples of attacks on civilians.” Yet, Obama retains the coveted tag of the winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace!
Obama’s campaign was all about “Yes, we can!” The truth is he hasn’t accomplished much of what he had promised – especially during his election campaign. Among his other failures, he has failed to keep one of his key promises – on closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison, and also on providing relief for illegal immigrants. Even after a year, Gitmo is still active; and no concrete steps have been crafted for illegal migrants. What is now a global joke is that his promises of closing Gitmo and solving other human rights issues were part of the parcel that won him the coveted Nobel Peace Prize!
It was Obama who initiated talks on global warming and announced his plans to organise a series of climate talks. Back in 2008, Obama had projected himself as a “citizen of the world”. But then, this same Obama, the perceived harbinger of optimism, now blames developing nations for global warming! This reminds me of President George W. Bush who, during his tenure, discarded the Kyoto Protocol on similar grounds. In similar manner, during a State-of-the-Union speech on January 27, 2010, Obama promised something that is quite the opposite of what he had stood for in his campaign days. Instead of talking about green jobs and climate change policy, he discussed his plans on nuclear power, oil, gas, coal and bio-fuels! That’s change indeed!
Nobel laureate Obama’s biggest global failure has perhaps been regarding the Iraq and Afghan issue, where he had committed during a formal announcement of a new Iraq strategy at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, on February 27, 2009, that “under the new plan, the US will remove all combat troops (from Iraq) by August 31, 2010.” Systematically delaying the troops’ withdrawal has been akin to breaking the promise. Similarly, Obama still is to remove his troops from Afghanistan – where there is blatant genocide being carried out under the garb of a peace process – and is finding all possible excuses to stay back. One wonders if the Nobel Peace Prize winner is actually unable to shift out of Afghanistan due to the $1 trillion worth mineral wealth in the land! The mother of all disasters in terms of doing the opposite of peace though is that, on October 25, 2010, the Obama administration ‘waived’ off sections of a law meant to prevent the recruitment of child soldiers in Africa, thus making it easier for countries in the dark continent to make use of underage troops. In a memorandum to Hillary Clinton, he wrote, “I hereby determine that it is in the national interest of the United States to waive the application to Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Yemen of the prohibition in section 404(a) of the [Child Service Prevention Act]”. And for records, recruiting underage soldiers is a human rights abuse in most of the nations. Even Noam Chomsky stated in an interview last month that President Obama “is involved in war crimes right now. For example, targeted assassinations are war crimes. That’s escalated quite sharply under Obama. If you look at WikiLeaks, there are a lot of examples of attacks on civilians.” Yet, Obama retains the coveted tag of the winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace!
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
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