Obama makes history: America votes for change

FOR the first time in history, an African-American won the White House. This indeed is historic. To my mind it is not so much historic because Obama is an American citizen by birth, struggled to get good professional education, ran for public service position to become a Senator, and has every right to contest and win the highest executive post on merit. Why should his ancestry (in a land of immigrants) and the colour of his skin make his achievement historical? Is that not based on the assumption that a non-white is less of a citizen and has fewer rights?
What, however, is historic is the dawn of change in the political process in America that Obama’s victory ushers. To be more specific, the return of faith in American dream of equal opportunities, the breaking of the sound barrier of race and colour that effectively denied equal rights to minorities and blacks in particular, the triumph of reason and rationale over blind prejudice, and above all the groundswell of enthusiasm and energy of millions of young and educated voters made the history. Never before these 2008 elections did so many rallied behind a call for change, seldom did so many volunteer so much effort and energy in election campaign. The youth invested in hope and yearned for change in the political landscape, and give a new start. Those are the things that made history. The long, hard contest between the Republicans and Democrats is history already past. The time to rejoice is over; the future is waiting to happen. History 20 or 30 years from now will tell how well and how much history was made by this unprecedented and enormous victory.
Now that victory is in hand, the real task has just begun. As the president-elect told the climb will be steep, time will be needed. Those millions who invested so much in hope and faith to change America such that it is fairer, kinder, more just and humane at home and abroad have to remain engaged in a long, hard struggle; even those who lost the contest have an obligation to participate as well as a right to be listened to with respect.
Barack Obama, young as he is, did show remarkable maturity in his victory night address to more than 200,000 supporters at Chicago. He spoke with now-familiar eloquence that inspired but also tempered his speech with sober reminder of the enormity of the task ahead; did not fail to extend a hand of accommodation and sought cooperation of his ‘opponents’. Thus, the signs are good; hope is alight.
Barack Obama has already spelt out some of his future agenda as president. These include domestic policies on economy and jobs, on taxes and spending, on education and employment. The legacy left by the outgoing administration is riddled with dire dilemmas of which the current economic meltdown is the foremost priority. All assessments point to the inevitability of deep structural changes in economy and finance so hard to bring about given the past decades of laissez faire and blanket de-regulation. Obama faces an unenviable yet unavoidable task to be accomplished against stubborn entrenched interests of neo-liberal economists. He will need the determination and grit he could possibly command. He will also need the consent and cooperation of the Congress to help passage of legislation he proposes. He could have done well with a two-thirds majority in the senate which did not come about.
American public have not been much concerned about deeper domestic policy issues other than those that affect them directly. That is why the public dislike taxes while their representatives vote to support war abroad to commit huge tax revenues in war effort. Iraq and Afghanistan are two inglorious, if not notorious, examples. There could be more as long as the US president and the Congress choose to conduct foreign policy based upon an exaggerated and unilateral notion of national security. The Bush doctrine of pre-emption and ‘war on terror’ has been two dangerous adventures.
Indeed Obama had opposed war on Iraq. Now as incumbent he has to steer his way through a withdrawal with ‘responsibility’. Commitment in haste does not allow disentanglement in haste as well. So much blood has spilt, treasures spent with so little to show for it.
While pledged to withdraw from Iraq, he has committed himself to send more troops to the Afghan theatre. How well that would play out is open to question. His NATO allies are not ready to commit combat troops.
The hardest choice with potential of widening the conflict is his stated wish to conduct military operations inside Pakistan territory. The implications are not all predictable. But certainly yet another war front is fraught with danger.
Saving money in Iraq and spending in Afghanistan and extend war on Pakistan might not prove a good military or economic option. There has to be another way. Recent past shows enough evidence to suggest it is easy to launch war but difficult to either win quickly or withdraw by choice.
Observers would know the US foreign policy has been consistent across the Republican and Democratic Party lines. As long as ‘national interests and national security’ are perceived as supreme needs and unilaterally secured, if necessary, the US would be obliged to put ‘all options on the table’ including an intimidating military option to browbeat the non-compliers. How well that would continue to work and at what cost are things the new president might do well to ponder and act upon. Would Obama command the ingenuity to forge a new policy, one tempered by alternatives that could make him appear to be a weak commander-in-chief something he has been repeatedly accused of?
The good thing is: Obama did commit himself to opening dialogue with adversaries without preconditions. That would go well with Iran and Syria. One hopes he can carry through this approach without giving in to the domestic pressures to the contrary.
Elections rhetoric is one thing. Obama’s open-ended commitment and his support to Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel did not raise the level of confidence in the Arab world. How he will accomplish peace in the Middle East remains an open challenge. I am not even mentioning other hotspots like Iran, like Russia asserting its lost role as a superpower.
Foreign policy issues are formidable enough. Assumptions by his predecessor proved wrong and dangerous. He has to chart changes and invent new yet uncertain or untested approaches.
While the domestic economy plunges into recession it might spare him less time and resources to engage vigorously in foreign policy issues. Yet the legacy he inherits permits him the leisure or luxury to do so.
Now that Obama has raised so much hope and inspired so many within America and abroad he has to deliver, at least a few things. He could make history by charting a course that corrects the deep economic anomalies and restores leadership with responsibility. Reforms within must precede the call for cooperation from other emerging global economies.
If he could deliver reforms at home, if he could restore the image of his country in the international community as a credible, responsible power with benign posture in relation to the weaker ones he will be making history. In doing that he would change the political process and culture of the US for not just now but for decades ahead.
The US still is the leader with potential to do great things at home and abroad. The US need not earn that leadership by show of force but by setting examples of its moral values and an abiding faith in justice and fairer international order.
Would Obama at the end of his first or second term in office leave that kind of legacy? We do not know. Elections anywhere raise high hopes. This one did inspire many and elevated hoes at home and abroad. If even a part of those are realised Barack Obama would have made what is truly historic, not by his ancestry or colour of skin but by making a contribution that changed the course of America and thereby rest of the world. Many of those who did not support his election would not grudge his success. Those who rallied to make him win would keep their hopes alive.

Change we need, change we may not get

BARACK Obama’s election as the American president is perceived as a victory on many fronts. Not to mention that he is the first African-American president, Obama almost embodies the American dream. Born of a Kenyan immigrant father and a white American mother, Obama has grown up poor. His resounding victory leaves little doubt that the American people have indeed voted for change. This change is not merely limited to choosing Democrats over Liberals or a younger candidate over an older one. Obama’s victory heralds a new chapter; it breaks away from long-held traditions which had been considered almost impossible.
The president-elect has on several times stated that he wants to spread the wealth around, and asserted his belief that the state should play a larger role in education and health. His campaign pledges indicate that he would raise taxes of corporations and big businesses, and use the revenue for rebates to middle-income families and public services that would largely benefit the middle classes.
His economic plan includes expenditure of $50 billion to jumpstart the US economy and protection of one million jobs. Obama has also pledged to introduce a windfall profit tax on oil company revenues to pay for rebates for the working families. Given the rising costs, he intends to provide up to a $1,000 in rebates for every American family. Obama also proposes disincentives for companies that outsource jobs and incentives for those that create employment in the United States.
Obama proposes an expenditure of $150 billion over ten years for a greener economy by encouraging production of hybrid cars that will run on electricity to save fossil fuel consumption and overcome American dependence on West Asia or Venezuela for energy security. As part of his plan to ensure energy security, Obama will continue to pursue promotion of biofuel production, which is already heavily subsidised.
Obama has pledged to ‘review’ the North American Free Trade Agreement and amend it such manner that it helps American workers. On the trade front, the president-elect ‘will fight for a trade policy that opens up foreign markets to support good American jobs.’ Obama intends to use trade agreements to spread good labour and environmental standards around the world and stand firm against agreements like the Central American Free Trade Agreement that fail to live up to those important benchmarks. They will also pressure the World Trade Organisation to enforce trade agreements and stop countries from continuing unfair government subsidies to foreign exporters and non-tariff barriers on US exports.
The American middle class and the working people can indeed expect positive changes in their lives and livelihoods. Obama’s plan to increase state spending in education and health will presumably also help reduce poverty and, more importantly, the rising disparity and hunger in the US. He has pledged to protect American jobs and industries with state spending and subsidies. That is all very good for the American people.
For the rest of the world, however, this change of American presidency would bring about few noticeable changes in terms of foreign policy. As far as trade is concerned, which is perhaps one of the major concerns for Bangladesh, Obama has already indicated his protectionist attitude. It would mean that Bangladeshi apparel manufacturers would continue to face high, if not even higher, tariffs if it helps protect the industries and jobs in the US.
When it comes to trade agreements, Obama will aggressively pursue such policies that generate employment in the US. He ‘will use these agreements to open up markets abroad and reduce subsidies in other countries and do away with non-tariff barriers applied to American goods.’ It means that, while he would adopt more protectionism for the US economy, his government would be aggressively looking towards liberalising the trade regime of other countries.
It also means that, while the US applies tariffs to the Bangladeshi apparels and firmly rejects the possibility of reducing them, the Obama administration would seek to tear down protectionist barriers in Bangladesh, or any other country, that prevent entry of American goods and services to protect jobs and industries. His position regarding trade agreements also hints at moving away from the accepted ‘less than full reciprocity’ between poor countries and developed countries in trade negotiations to reciprocal concessions.
Bangladeshi manufacturers as well as the establishment have pinned their hopes on the New Partnership for Development Act that includes provisions for the much-sought duty-free market access to the US market. There was already strong opposition within the US, as well as the African lobby, against Bangladesh receiving such concessions. Under Obama, those concessions would become even more difficult to secure.
In fact, in response to a questionnaire of National Council of Textile Organisations, dated October 24, the president-elect pledged to support almost all the points that the textile council advocated. This same council has thus far, even as recently as on September 25, opposed the idea of duty-free access for Bangladeshi products to the US market. They point out that the textile industry is among the largest sectors in the US employing some 700,000 people.
There is little indication that America’s agricultural policies or the targets set out by its energy bill will be altered by the Obama administration. Obama’s energy plan clearly states that his administration would continue to encourage biofuel production and, given his protectionist attitude about creating more jobs in the US, it is unlikely that it would shift from corn-based ethanol, no matter how inefficient it is in terms carbon emission. The US under Obama would remain firmly on course to meet its target of producing 10 per cent automobile fuel from ethanol.
It has been argued repeatedly by most of the international research organisations and institutions that biofuel production has had significant impact on food crisis. Obama’s administration, together with a similar European target, would contribute to further aggravate the global food crisis. His policies would still pit empty fuel tanks against empty stomachs and American subsidies for biofuel production—about $7 billion in 2007—would make that even more unequal and unjust.
Obama’s presidency is unlikely to bring about changes in its institutions or other international agencies and their policies. If anything, these institutions and agencies would become even more active in imposing conditions on poor countries to liberalise their economies and reduce their subsidies since they do not make economic sense and encourage inefficiency. The same conditions, however, would not apply for the US where billions would be spent to shore up manufacturing sectors. Subsidies and incentives will be handed out to ensure that companies do not outsource their jobs and continue to employ Americans, no matter how inefficient or how much more costly they may be. It is unlikely that other developing countries would be allowed to do the same though.
Thus, aid agencies of the American establishment will continue to pursue projects that eventually end up ensuring increased business and opportunity for American consultants and companies. The multinational corporations that control American policies will continue to dominate and exert influence fulfilling their own interest through US role across the world. For instance, the top contributors to Obama’s campaign include Microsoft Corporation, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup and UBS, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics, a research group tracking money in US politics. Microsoft has driven the US agenda to implement intellectual property rights, while UBS, a leading financial firm in the world has interests in Asia Energy, which proposes to set up an open-pit coalmine in Phulbari.
In all likelihood, the Obama administration government will succeed in making the life of an average American better. But outside its borders, US policies will hardly change. Except that in Obama, quite like George W Bush’s immediate predecessor, and very much unlike Bush himself, there will be a good orator who successfully created a façade but furthered American imperialist interests all the same.

America makes a new tryst with destiny

THE magic word ‘change’ and the magic number ‘270’ have both finally clicked. Change with a capital C. Wednesday’s mid-morning news bulletin announced that Barack Obama’s electoral college votes had crossed the winning figure of 270 while votes of some states were yet to be counted. What was more, he had upset predictions for some traditional Republican bastions. After eight years, 3 trillion dollars in war expenditure, economic meltdown, demonstrable futility of the policy of countering terror with terror and nearly four thousand American body bags, the voters have taken the right decision. Common Americans, like the common people everywhere, do not want war, although they can be faulted for their unthinking consumerism and uncaring attitude towards the wide world as long as cheap oil (‘gas’, as they call it) and cheap food are ensured. This time they have learnt that you have to fight for these things also.
This was not a closely fought presidential contest as in 1960 and 2000. As the election was approaching the result was becoming more and more predictable. But predictability did not take away from its excitement. Some US presidential elections and election campaigns were more interesting than others. This year too the contest was more exhilarating than a mere leap year event like the Olympic Games. The record turnout in this election shows that common Americans are not as apolitical as generally thought. An important reason for the high turnout may be that a higher proportion of African-Americans voted than usual. There was a time when they were too afraid to go to the polling booth. And the youth were less indifferent this time. Muslims may also have participated in greater numbers. A call was made from mosques upon the Muslims to exercise their voting right, without promoting any individual candidate. Hispanic Americans too were traditionally less enthusiastic about voting. Immigration, a hot topic among Muslims and Hispanics, is very much on the agenda of Barack Obama, the son of an immigrant.
Anything unconventional easily draws attention and in this unconventionality is packed global political and economic implications which are almost impossible to entirely foresee and gauge. We can leave aside the comic element introduced in this highly serious affair in the person of Sarah Palin, who came in suddenly from nowhere and seemed not to know a thing or two about politics and election and America and instead lent some hilarity to the tense atmosphere. It is unfortunate that the first female vice-presidential nominee in US history should prove herself to be a bull in a china shop.
It can be argued, of course, that it is vain to be too effusive about Barack Obama because, after all, from the point of view of the policy on arms race, the Middle East and oil interests the difference between Democrat and Republican candidates in all elections has been just as much as between Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Will it be different this time? No one should forget that here is a president who has promised the Zionists that undivided Jerusalem shall be the capital of Israel. Then is it justifiable to hope for a new turn? True, but sometimes the style not only matters but even makes an impact on the substance. And the political process can somewhat chasten politics itself. In foreign relations Obama’s emphasis has all along been on engagement and dialogue, words which were an anathema to George W Bush who was continuously threatening that he had ‘all options on the table’ (including military strike against non-complying states).
The election was mainly fought on economic platform at the time of meltdown. Honesty and candour in a different situation would have created sympathy for a candidate but at this time of meltdown it did not help McCain to confess that he is not knowledgeable about economics. And Obama is known as the most left-wing senator. High taxes and high public spending can be a viable option now. This may bring Obama in conflict with corporate interest. Record amount of money has been spent by both sides in this election. (Around $2.5 billion in total). Those who donated large amounts have axes to grind. McCain too is a Republican without being a neocon and he too would perhaps not toe the neocon line but then on economic matters he is a self-confessed ignoramus. Besides, the anti-incumbency factor acts even more strongly in times of economic downturn. Some have seen this election as a referendum against Bush-Cheney rule. Fortunately for Obama, the election took place at a time when George Bush’s popularity rating had sunk abnormally low (26 per cent).
Race and religion are still live electoral issues in the world’s strongest and second largest democracy. Forty-six years ago the Catholic John Kennedy had to face the religious question just because before him all presidents had been WASP (White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant). That rigidity has been broken. The new president has part Muslim genealogy. Not that the racial question was entirely muted. According to a recent survey conducted by Stanford University, Associated Press and Yahoo as cited by the Indian columnist MJ Akbar, some 10 per cent Americans are irredeemably racist and another 6 per cent are unconsciously so. Some dirty racial tricks were also played to stoke up prejudice. (In Pennsylvania, a ‘swing’ state, they planted a young white woman who alleged that she had been molested by a tall and muscular black man who also branded her face for opposing Obama. Her story was even televised before a further scrutiny was able to call the bluff and she herself acknowledged having been planted. As election prank the drama could have been amusing but for the fact that it is deeply racist in form, content and flavour).
There is no disputing that racism persists but there is another way of looking at things. The fact that surmounting all the odds an African-American is entering the White House is itself not only a positive change but one with revolutionary import. The glass of race relations is not only half-empty, it is also half-filled. The American media, which made itself contemptible by its servility to the establishment and acquiring the epithet ‘embedded’, played a commendable role in this case by not letting the race issue surface. Not only will the global media see a new face, everyone hopes the new face will be less arrogant. No one can question that the USA is, still, the world’s most powerful state, but powerful entities are not necessarily arrogant which unfortunately and unnecessarily George W Bush made his country appear.
During the campaign both the candidates said they would include persons from the opposition in the government. Is it an attempt towards national unity in a time of financial crisis? Massive challenges await the new president. He opposed the Iraq war, opposed the surge in troops and has pledged to end the war. To oppose the war before it had begun was easy; to disentangle his country keeping its interest intact and bequeathing peace to the Iraqi people is not easy. He will reduce taxes for the poor, give more attention to healthcare, bring drastic changes in education and limit dependence on energy. Also, he will resolve the immigration issue.
It will be wrong to find significance of the change by contrasting the new programmes only with the eight inglorious Bush years. If we look further behind, fifty or sixty years, it will be clear that a sea change has come about. Racism persists but is denied any public space. A presidential candidate was branded a socialist by opponents and yet he sweeps the polls, non-whites, immigrants and the poor feel empowered. All this could be accomplished through a slow and democratic political process. The world can still be made a better place. What Obama will achieve remains in the womb of the future but for the present this election has brought considerable prestige for the US. By prioritising education the Harvard trained Obama addresses a growing deficiency in the quality of American leadership. George Bush’s ignorance was proverbial, his father’s running mate vice-president Dan Quale caused a storm through America by failing to correctly spell the word ‘potato’, the other day Sarah Palin could not name a single American newspaper. Hope Obama can successfully play his part as an early agent of this change.

Obama writes new chapter in US history

WE HEARTILY congratulate Democrat Barack Obama for his historic and spectacular victory over Republican John McCain in the US presidential elections. The historic nature of Obama’s election as the 44th president of the United States cannot be overstressed. In August, he had become the first African-American to be nominated for the presidency by a major party and yesterday, he became the first African-American to become the president-elect, 44 years after the signing of the Civil Rights Act and 40 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jnr. On January 20, 2009, he will be sworn-in as the first black man to occupy the White House.
In the year Barack Obama was born, the United States was a country segregated by race. Slavery may have been abolished a hundred years prior, but African-Americans were still considered lesser beings and treated as second-class citizens, if that; they were made to go to different schools than whites and could sit only at the back of buses and trains in order to make space for white people in the front. That was the America into which Barack Obama was born. Forty-seven years on, racial undercurrents still remain in the US, palpable in some areas more than others; however, for Obama today to stand on the verge of entering the highest office in the land on the back of a landslide victory over a white opponent is not only a phenomenal achievement but will, at least in part, we hope, exorcise the spectre of America’s racist past that continues to haunt the nation.
There is something for us to learn from Obama’s election as America’s first black president. While Obama’s own political rise may have been meteoric, it should not be forgotten that it took a very long time for blacks in America to establish their political and democratic rights as equal citizens, and even longer for them to see one of their own elected as the country’s chief executive. Moreover, the positive change that has happened in America with regard to the African-American population in particular and minority communities in general has been achieved gradually through the political process, whether it is the 13th amendment to the US constitution that abolished slavery in 1865, the signing of the Civil Rights Act ending racial discrimination in 1964 or Obama’s election to the nation’s top office in 2008. Nothing was achieved through quick-fix measures, suspension of rights, coercion or violence. Hence, we should realise that, just like in America, the positive changes that we wish for in the nature of politics in our country will only occur with time if we try to bring them about through the political process, not by circumventing it.
Today, just like most of the rest of the world, we cannot help but feel optimistic as Bush’s America gives way to Obama’s America. The US remains the only country that is relevant and influential in every part of the world, and hence, the election of an American president affects the peace, harmony and well-being of all the people in the world. We have much expectation from a President Obama and would like to see him take a much more nuanced and pragmatic approach to economic and foreign policy, especially after eight years of living with the obtuse and dogmatic George W Bush. Hence, as we wish Obama well, we do so with a caveat. The entire world now looks upon him to give a new direction to American leadership, which he himself has promised over and over again during the course of his campaign. We hope he doesn’t fail in his endeavour.

Profile of Obama

Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, was elected the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday.
The 47-year-old senator from Illinois promises to bring ‘changes we believe in,’ which could begin with being the first African American president in history.
Obama’s life tells a different story from previous presidential hopefuls. He was born on August 14, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii, to a Kenyan father and a white mother from the state of Kansas, in the US heartland.
However, his father left home only two years after his birth for a graduate degree in Harvard and then a post in the Kenyan government. The only time Obama met his father again was at the age of 10. He was killed in an automobile accident in 1982.
Obama’s mother married an Indonesian oil executive when Obama was six. The whole family then moved to the southeast Asian country. He eventually returned to Hawaii for high school and stayed with his grandparents.
As he says in his book, Dreams From My Father, being rooted in both black culture and white culture, has helped him gain expansive vision he could bring to politics later. After graduating from Columbia University in 1983, Obama was ‘possessed with a crazy idea — that I would work at a grassroots level to bring about change.’
He moved from New York to Chicago, Illinois, in 1985 and worked as a community organiser in a poor African-American area for three years, when he realised involvement at a higher level was needed to bring true improvement to such communities.
Obama then attended Harvard Law School and was elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. After graduation, he returned to Chicago where he practiced civil rights law and taught the Constitution at the University of Chicago.
Obama decided to make his first run for public office in 1996, winning a seat in the Illinois state senate. Four years later, he sought a seat in the US House of Representatives, but without success.
In 2004, Obama beat six Democratic rivals to win the nomination in the congressional elections. His remarkable skills in oratory also impressed the party’s presidential candidate, John Kerry, who named him the keynote speaker at the national convention, where Obama, for the first time, stepped on the national political stage.
That November, he overwhelmingly captured 70 per cent of popular votes in the congressional elections to become a senator.
In the Senate, Obama’s voting record coincided with those of the Democratic Party’s liberal wing. He criticised the Iraq war from the beginning, worked on Congress ethical standards and increasing the use of renewable fuels. He also built his reputation as a new breed of politician by working without partisan and racial divides.
Obama announced his bid for the White House on February 10, 2007, in Springfield, Illinois, where former president Abraham Lincoln had delivered a speech in 1858.
He joined seven other politicians in the Democratic camp, including former first lady and New York senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton. In the first half of 2007, he raised 58 million US dollars, setting the record for fundraising by a presidential campaign in the first six months of the calendar year before the elections, although he trailed Clinton in national polls in 2007.
However, Obama was highly successful in enlisting supporters, especially among youth, minorities and those with higher education, and mapped a strategy to campaign not only in primary states but also caucus states. In the first caucuses held in Iowa on January 3, 2008, he scored a surprising victory.
After the Super Tuesday of February 5, Obama tied Hillary. With victories in 10 more consecutive contests over the rest of February, he surpassed her to become the most likely nominee. Finally, on June 3, he clinched the presidential candidacy.
On August 29, Obama and his running mate Joe Biden told the Democratic national convention that he would bring the changes the country needs and ‘revive the American dream.’
He has promised that if elected, he will take the country in a new direction by withdrawing US combat troops from Iraq with responsibility, enacting universal and affordable healthcare and adopting tax policies favouring lower- and middle-income families.
During the national campaign, he led Republican rival John McCain not only in polling numbers but also in campaign funding.
Obama met his wife, Michelle Robinson, in June 1989 when he worked at a Chicago law firm. They married on October 3, 1992, and have two daughters, Malia Ann and Natasha.

Americans vote for change Barack Obama makes history

Barack Obama swept to an historic and decisive victory as the first black US president, but pleaded for time to heal and transform the superpower as he faced up Wednesday to the huge task of forging his promised change.
‘It’s been a long time coming, but tonight... at this defining moment, change has come to America,’ Obama told 240,000 euphoric supporters, many in tears, at a rally late Tuesday after defeating Republican John McCain.
Obama, 47, will be inaugurated as the 44th US president on January 20, and inherit an economy mired in financial crisis, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and a nuclear showdown with Iran.
‘Even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime, two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century,’ said Obama.
‘The road ahead will be long, our climb will be steep, we may not get there in one year or even one term, but America — I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there,’ Obama said in his home town of Chicago.
‘I promise you — we as a people will get there.’
Senator Obama solidified traditional Democratic states and cut deep into the Republican territory which his rival needed to control to win the White House.
Obama’s win was greeted with euphoria across the United States and reverberated around the world.
New York’s Times Square exploded in joy at a moment of healing for America’s racial scars, and a screaming crowd gathered outside the White House. In Kenya, where Obama’s father was born, the president, Mwai Kibaki, declared a national holiday.
Celebrations erupted from the bars of London and Sydney, with parties spilling onto the streets from Berlin to Havana and from Paris to the small Japanese town of Obama.
Democrats also made huge strides in Congress, gaining an unshakeable grip on power in Washington. They boosted their majority in the Senate by five seats, with results still pending in four states, and by 20 seats in the lower House of Representatives.
After a bitter campaign, McCain was gracious in defeat, and noted that his election was a moment to cherish for African Americans.
Deeply unpopular president George W Bush, who has been in control through eight turbulent years, also congratulated Obama.
‘Mr President-elect, congratulations to you,’ White House spokeswoman Dana Perino quoted the president as saying in a phone call to Obama.
‘What an awesome night for you, your family and your supporters. Laura and I called to congratulate you and your good bride.’
Obama’s inauguration will complete a stunning ascent to the pinnacle of US and global politics from national obscurity just four years ago and close an eight-year era of deepening international and economic crises under Bush.
Obama is promising to renew bruised ties with US allies, and to engage some of the United States’ fiercest foes such as Iran and North Korea. He has vowed to tackle climate change and ensure health care access for all Americans. Some 45 million Americans have no health care whatsoever.
His presidency also marks a stunning social shift, with Obama, the son of a black Kenyan father and white mother from Kansas, the first African American president of a nation still riven by racial divides.
Forty-five years after civil rights icon Martin Luther King laid out his ‘dream’ of racial equality, Obama’s election broke new barriers and may have helped heal some of the moral wounds left by slavery and the US civil war.
When he launched his campaign on a chilly day in Illinois in February 2007, Obama forged a mantra of change which powered him through the longest, most costly US presidential campaign in history.
His success looked likely after he captured Pennsylvania, the battleground state which was McCain’s best hope of winning a Democratic state and keeping his rival from the White House.
And in a sweet moment for Democrats, Obama also seized the key midwestern states of Ohio, Iowa and Indiana as well as the southwestern state of New Mexico, all states won by Bush in 2004.
He later added Ohio, the decisive state which swept Bush to victory in 2004 and another Republican state, Virginia, which had not voted Democrat since 1964. He also won Florida, ground zero of the 2000 recount debacle.
McCain had argued Obama was too inexperienced to be US commander-in-chief and would pursue ‘socialist’ redistribution policies that would leave the economy mired in recession.
As of early Wednesday he had won 28 states, including the district of Columbia, for 349 electoral votes.
McCain had won 20 states but had not broken out of the Republican heartland and the south for 159 electoral votes.
Results were still pending in the states of North Carolina and Missouri, according to television networks.
In the Senate, Democrats wrested control of five Republican seats including in the traditionally Republican state of Virginia, followed by New Hampshire, North Carolina and New Mexico, reaching a 56 seat majority in the 100-seat chamber.
Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell clung on in Kentucky, meaning Democrats were unlikely to win the 60 seats they need in the 100-seat chamber needed to frustrate Republican obstruction tactics.
Senate races in Alaska, Minnesota, Georgia and Oregon however were still too close to call.
Democrats also won 20 seats in the House of Representatives, solidifying their majority to 258 against 177 of the Republicans, according to data from NBC news.

C for change, also for charade

TRUE to script, the new US president, Barack Obama, has sought to define the tone and tenor of his administration as markedly different from that of his immediate predecessor, George W Bush. At a lighting speed, one may say. Two days into his tenure, Obama ordered the closure of the Guantánamo Bay prison and outlawed torture and secret CIA prisons abroad in what the international media termed ‘a far-reaching overhaul of the way the United States treats al-Qaeda detainees and other terror suspects.’ Obama also named two ‘hard-nosed’ negotiators — George Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke — as special envoys in the ‘geopolitical minefields’ of the Middle East, and Afghanistan and Pakistan. Each of these moves is regarded as ‘a sharp change of course from the policies’ of Bush and a promise fulfilled from a historic campaign.
True to form, Obama has sought to temper every tough choice that he makes with his election-winning mantras of ‘change’ and ‘need’ for the US to re-establish its leadership and show to the world that ‘America’s moral example must be the bedrock and the beacon of our global leadership.’ The word ‘change’ itself is intoxicating; it inebriates even the most incorrigible cynic. It also raises hopes — invariably to unrealistic highs. And hopes do get cruelly belied. When it does, ‘change’ and ‘charade’ sound synonymous, as they must do to the Palestinians now after Obama’s speech at the US State Department on January 22 wherein he outlined his administration’s vision of peace in the Middle East.
‘Let me be clear: America is committed to Israel’s security,’ Obama said. ‘And we will always support Israel’s right to defend itself against legitimate threats.’ Then, as if as an afterthought and seemingly out of his inherent urge to coat unpleasant truths with some feel-good sound-bites, he added, ‘Now, just as the terror of rocket fire aimed at innocent Israelis is intolerable, so, too, is a future without hope for the Palestinians.’
Throughout the section of his speech where the US dwelt upon the Israel-Palestinian conflict, he sought to put forward the age-old rhetoric, pursued as recently as his immediate predecessor, George W Bush. ‘No democracy can tolerate such danger to its people, nor should the international community, and neither should the Palestinian people themselves, whose interests are only set back by acts of terror,’ he said. He mentioned the loss of life in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel at same breath, as if the extent of ‘tragic violence’ was similar, if not the same, for both sides.
Then there was the same ‘things-to-do list’ as offered by the US and the so-called international community during the Bush years: ‘Hamas must meet clear conditions: recognise Israel’s right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements.’ What Israel, in return, needs to do? ‘Complete the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza.’ And the US and its partners? ‘Support a credible anti-smuggling and interdiction regime, so that Hamas cannot rearm.’
The assessment by the Obama administration of the realities on the ground in Gaza is deliberately eschewed, to say the least. Hamas did go by the six-month ceasefire agreement; Israel did not. According to the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre at the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Centre, the total number of rocket and mortar attacks went down from 245 in June to a total of 26 for July through October (quoted in Complicity in Slaughter. Gaza by Rahnuma Ahmed, New Age, January 19, 2009). The relative lull was broken by Israel on the night of November 4 when it sent a commando squad into Gaza, killing six Hamas members.
As for the damage in the Gaza war, a look at the UN estimation is enough to see through the sham of an effort by the US administration to establish a semblance of symmetry between the damage sustained by the Gazans and the Israelis. Around 20 per cent of Gaza’s entire housing stock was hit – 4,000 homes destroyed and 20,000 severely damaged. The UN estimated on January 19 that 1,314 people were killed in the conflict, including 412 children, and more than 5,000 wounded. The figures released by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights on January 21 are very similar: 1,284 Gazans killed and 4,336 wounded.
Israel also violated international conventions at will and with impunity, as it has over the years. According to international media reports, the human rights watchdog Amnesty International has started investigation into Israel’s use of white phosphorous during the 22-day assault against Hamas in the Gaza strip. White phosphorous is an incendiary weapon and bursts into flames at the slightest contact; its use in civilian areas is banned under Protocol III on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons.
Obama must be aware of these facts; he should as the president of the most powerful nation on earth. Still his iteration of the clichéd narrative that ‘Hamas is the terrorist and Israel is the victim’. It could be only construed, especially by the Palestinians and the Arab world, as the sadly familiar American duplicity. The new White House needs to recognise that it is America’s immoral example that has eaten into its global leadership over the years. On this count, Obama may be just carrying on the legacy of George W Bush and the US presidents before him.
The hopes for a change in the US policy for the Middle East with the inauguration of Obama were unrealistic in the first place. After all, Obama is the president of the US and his prime concern is to protect and promote the interest of the US above all else. Needless to say, the US interest is enmeshed with that of Israel. One thrives on the other although one may argue they need not.
Obama is spot-on when he says lasting peace ‘requires more than a long ceasefire’. However, his promise of sustaining ‘an active commitment to seek two states living side by side in peace and security’, at this point in time and, particularly, after his defining speech at the US State Department, sounds more like a ‘charade’ than a genuine commitment to ‘change’.