Ovi Magazine : Have you become a politician president Obama? by Thanos Kalamidas

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Have you become a politician president Obama?
by Thanos Kalamidas
2012-11-16 08:52:07

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I have to admit that the announcement of a visit to Myanmar from the freshly elected for a second term American president Obama caught me off guard. And if you noticed, I didn’t use the name Burma but the name the dictators use, Myanmar. Because this is the country president Obama is planning to visit and congratulate them “for their effects to bring democracy back” one of the bloodiest dictatorships on earth. And this is where I start feeling uncomfortable, because Myanmar is doing very little to return to democracy but I’m afraid that Barack Obama is doing too much to become a politician.

Barack Obama was not elected because he was black. The only ones who cared about his colour, the only ones who pulled the race card were the Republicans projecting their problems and issues. On the contrary neither Obama nor the Democratic Party ever talked about the president’s colour. Actually and even though the republican candidates for eight years bated every single campaign with the president’s colour, Obama himself never bitten it. The people voted for Barack Obama because they wanted a change. And by change they didn’t limit their wants to the republican policies but they wanted a change in Washington. They wanted a president who cared for the people and he didn’t care for the lobbies and the games they play. They didn’t want a politician in the White House.

After all that’s why Hillary Clinton lost in the race with Obama inside the Democratic Party. She was too much of a politician, too much insider, too much Washington. Obama was the outsider. The one who was going to fight the lobbies and we all know nowadays the power the lobbies and how contagious they are. They are so contagious that we have seen them crawling around Brussels and Strasbourg lately and often they are exactly the same faces serving the same interests always bankers and industries never the people. And this is what Obama came to fight.

And it was not only the change for the people of the USA, it was for the people all around and that’s why he got the peace Nobel Prize. Because he came to stand for the people. He’s not a politician and he’s a democrat. Please, be careful; I said democrat not member of the Democratic Party. A man who respects the ideals of democracy. Remember George W. Bush, – I suppose it is to early to forget him yet – in the name of his war against evil he was too ready to unite with every single monster just to succeed his target. And he did so. Remember general Musharraf? The man was the nightmare of Pakistan and his hobby was to imprison or kill his political enemies. Oh he had another hobby as well; cover the Taliban and helping them while he was wearing cowboy hats with George. And since we are in George W. Bus lets remember another star of the era. Donald Rumsfeld, you know the one who flatten Iraq. Donald during the Ronald Reagan era was presidential emissary to Saddam Hussein. He was there often congratulating him for effects to bring democracy in Iraq and there are photos with him holding hands with his later enemy. And I’ve better stop here because in the Reagan era we even had holding hands with Osama bin Laden. Always for the good cause. Always against the evil. Semantics but the evil had different names though the times. It was the Soviet Union, the Iranians, the Taliban and al-Qaeda and it was all politics. Later in all cases we found out that Bin Laden was a terrorist that Hussein was a mass murderer and Musharraf was a traitor.

But what Thein Sein is? He is a mass murderer dictator, responsible for genocide against his own people and on top of that a criminal of common crimes like drug dealing and trafficking. He is responsible for thousands of deaths not only in his country but all around the world including USA through his drug – heroin, cocaine – producing and selling. In some levels he is worst that bin Laden. But he is also ally of China. Yes, this new China with her new leader Xi Jinping who Obama like a new Nixon wants to reach.

And the people of Burma Mr. President? Did you notice? Now I said Burma. Because it is Myanmar for the drug dealers dictators but Burma for her own people. So what about the people? What about the people who suffer and die? What about the pictures we all share often online? Have the lobbies won? Have the bureaucrats of the foreign office won? Have you become a politician president Obama?

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Murray Hunter	2012-11-16 09:22:19
Thanos more people have to say these things. Australia is patterned by their sense of "political correctness" and accept without question anything "big brother" says now. Any legacy for Obama is going to be in the Middle east and where is he in Burma.


Emanuel Paparella	2012-11-16 13:01:46
Timely question indeed, Thanos. It is a perennial question for all men and women who hold political power for any length of time. It is a question that implies a distinction between politicians and statesmen. Sometimes the two go happily together and then you have a great leader of the caliber of a Lincoln or Jefferson. When only the former applies, then you have a mediocrity, at best and the results are also mediocre. Unfortunately what has obtained historically in the West in the last fifty years or so are plenty of politicians and precious few statesmen. Indeed, the alliance of the West with dictators of various stripes was manly due to a misguided priority, namely the fight against Communism via the cold war. The rationalization for that war was the idea that democracy had to be preserved and defended at all costs, but the reality was that more often than not democracy came out of it tainted and weakened by dubious alliances with dictators. As the saying went: he may be son of a bitch, but he is our son of bitch. The litmus test of course was anti-communism. Well, it appears that history is repeating itself under our eyes. The fifties had McCarthy who saw a communist under every bed, now we have Allen West, the congressman from Florida who has discovered some 80 card carrying communist congressmen. Think of it for a moment, Burma is a country close to China, so is Australia, so is Viet Nam. It would not be wholly unreasonable to surmise that a new cold war has been initiated, that a new communist super power needs to be confronted and challenged and this time around it is not the Soviet Union (Romney was fifty years behind on that one as in many other things) and politicians of all stripes around the world are now being sent a familiar message: that they can remain dictators as long as they are our sons of bitches and fight communism with us. I may be wrong here and in a way I hope I am, but there is too much evidence to the contrary. In any case, what is ironic and even paradoxical is that Communism is a political ideology which originally comes from the West and in some way replaces ancestral traditions and religions. I have talked about this phenomenon extensively and repeatedly in Ovi with the result that I have been branded an advisor to the Pope. So be it, but one keeps hoping that eventually the message and not the messenger will be paid attention to. One thing remains certain: what goes around, comes around. E la nave va.