The Historywas made today with Barak Obama becoming the President. There is some irony in the fact that this became the highest point in his political career. I am not sure anyone ever took the oath with their highest accomplishment - just getting to the White House.
We all wish him the best. I hope that we get someone for the long haul, not just to take the office, and rest on this achievement. In the country used to instant gratification, would he be able to keep energizing the impatient nation?
There are a lot of challenges and let this inauguration day be the most difficult day of his presidency. The challenge is that there is a big difference between being a leftist and making decisions that can be very unpopular with his electorate. Will he follow his guts and react to the world the way, which is prudent and practical, whether it goes along or against the ideological or party lines, and get many upset; or follow the ideological and party lines and get into a dangerous disregard of the realities.
Obama is a clever man, but it is inevitable that liberal ideals are to be tested against a harsh and unforgiving reality with little tolerance for indecisiveness and weakness.
Contrary to a common belief, we do not share the same ideals with the rest of the world. We only share them with a small part of that world, mostly Western Europe, and it is not a happy marriage either. Beyond Western Europe, the terms "freedom" and "democracy" often mean different things. And though I do not think it is our job to "export" freedom and democracy, it is our obligation to keep the world safe. Because we can't keep America safe, if we can't get the world safe.
It is a heck of a task. It is no longer a world, where if you do not get into the affairs of others, they do not get into your affairs. Those times have gone. There are people out there whose only goal is to destroy America, Fundamentalism comes from the desperation that they can't compete against America, and thus establish religious and moral superiority, which they claim, so the only way to deal with it is to destroy the competition. It is against America, because our existence is a testament to their failure. They are out to destroy America to prove themselves to their own people.
It is not a matter of being nice or not nice. It is a matter of them being unable to explain why following a superior religion they do not achieve better lives for their people, and America does it. If you can't compete, you need to destroy or accept that they are not the mightiest, the greatest, the smartest, the cleanest...
America is not the problem, it is just the target. The only way not to be the target is to become inferior, to succumb. Thinking that you can square it with talks, with niceties is naive. If they talk, it is because they can't destroy. When they can, they destroy.
Russia, which did not move far from the ways of the Soviet Union, is again turning to brandishing weapons as the way to establish itself in the world as the superpower. Not by economic growth, not by following the path of democratic reforms, but by strengthening the powers in the hands of notoriously familiar secretive organizations. Russia's pressure to all its neighbors - former Soviet Republics, is a growing cause of tension and is a hot spot on the World's map.
China with its phenomenal economic growth and lagging democratic reforms is another problematic area, and looks like this is our financier. Not of our choice.
But this is all tomorrow. Today is the day of celebration, the toughest day in the life of the new president ... so far.
We better wish us all well.
Comments(15)