Thursday, June 04, 2009

A good possibility

There it is. Finally it is done. From the historic city of Cairo, Obama spoke like no other U.S. president before him. There are faultfinders on either side of the spectrum; some would argue that this is another lip service from another American president, others might find Obama to be less critical of the Islamic world in areas like democracy and human rights. But the reality is that forging friendship takes hard work - the confrontational approach of Bush got us to where we are today. 'You are either with us or against us!' got us to a world where most people chose to be against us. He had to do the rope walk, he couldn't pander to the forces the wish harm to the U.S, nor he could lecture the muslim nations on their problems - so he did what he had to, quite brilliantly.

Speeches of this stature are of enormous importance, but even more important are the actions that follow them. It will take a while before we can fathom the impact of Obama doctrine, but words would remain simply as words, as long as the U.S continues invasions of 'choice', conduct target killings on sovereign territories using drones defying international norms and torture its prisoners.  To stay as the moral authority of the world, U.S should live up to the ideals in which this nation was founded. Regardless of the recent reversals in his policy, In Obama, I still see that as a possibility!