By B. R. Gowani
The joy of a colored president heading the US after 232 years since its inception proves transitory when the reality of his policies reveals the illusion.
So many people of so many colors and of so many beliefs had so many hopes from the author of “The Audacity of Hope” that for a while it seemed that President Barack Obama would actually do something about the pressing issues within and without the United States. It was foolish to indulge in such thoughts of hope.
One cannot deny that when Obama took oath on January 20, George Bush had left him an empty piggy bank — US was a totally bankrupt country by then. One has also to remember that on the foreign front he inherited Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Not to forget the plight of Palestinians who lost their land to the Jews in 1948 on which the State of Israel was created.
It is almost 3000 days now since US began the war in Afghanistan, over six and a half years since it first attacked Iraq, a couple of years of direct involvement in Pakistan, and the verbal and other harassment of Iran is on the rise. Now — Obama is being asked to send more troops to Afghanistan!
Domestically, Obama is not doing much to lift the downtrodden people in the US, many of whom are resorting more and more to gathering pennies for groceries or addictions (smoking and drinking), which should make the conservatives and white racists happy. This should make the conservatives happy because it does not have to bail them out and can continue bailing out the big looters only. But that is not the case. The attacks against him grow more vehement and virulent. Nobody can outdo Fox TV and so it has to be in the forefront.
Can Obama Re-emerge?
It is not quite an year that Obama has been in power and yet it is not difficult to see that he will have a tough time getting re-elected. On the one hand, the racist elements will do their best to block his second term, and on the other, his own policies are such that he is digging himself into a political grave.
But then, anything is possible in politics; and a politician can do anything to make it possible. Obama can re-emerge a Clinton style re-emergence: walking out of the political grave as a vampire. Obama will have to hire Republican advisors the way Bill Clinton hired Dick Morris and advocated “triangulation.”
This is the only foreseeable way Obama can re-emerge. But the tragedy is that this colored vampire will have no blood left to suck: the poor are absolutely kaput.
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com