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Can Obama come up to the expectations of the world?
Comment
Moeed Pirzada
BLISS was it in that dawn to be alive” was how the young Wordsworth
had eulogised the energy and feverishness of the French Revolution.
Two hundred and nineteen years later another Bastille has fallen:
America has elected its first black President. It is a defining
moment. No doubt. Yet it is interesting to see how the reaction, the
narrative, the nature of the comment, that continues, has assumed a
life and meaning of its own.
Borrowing the expressions of film maker Michael Moore: “In a nation
that was founded on genocide and then built on the back of the
slaves, it was an unexpected moment...a good man, a black man, said
he would bring change to Washington, and the majority of the country
liked the idea.”
Notice the words: Change in Washington. But what could be the nature
of that change in which people from New York to Karachi can
simultaneously believe in? Is it even possible?
Few days before the elections, Noam Chomsky, had argued that an
Obama victory will change little for America is governed by just one
party and that is the business party; with Democrats and
Republicans, entities with slight variations, taking turns to
protect the interests of the big business. He then described the
European reaction to Obama a European delusion.
Chomsky too was our hero. A hero of the times when our parents
watched Dev Anand and Zeenat Amaan in the epic: “Hare Rama Hare
Krishna”. Today whether Chomsky is a realist or a cynic: only
history can judge. But two things are definite: One, in the age of
Obama, he is out of sync and fashion; and second he should have used
the term: “global delusion” for with the humiliation of neo-cons a
world is falling over to make sense of what happened and above all
to write, chat and celebrate.
Like the glittering prism of rain drops these comments reflect the
relief not only of foreign policy wonks and realists in Washington
and London, of new age philosophers from Ottawa to Istanbul; of
democrats, civil right activists, feminists and Muslims everywhere
but also of the stem cell researchers, environmentalists, film
makers, doctors, teachers and school children dressed in all colours
across the blue planet. And don’t forget the Taleban in the caves of
Afghanistan. As we grapple with this immense and unbelievably
diverse sense of human victory we are forced not only to fathom the
persuasive power of Obama’s charisma and message but also the size
of Bush’s ineptness and failure of the republican vision. In an age
of globalisation and You Tube those idiots had offended the whole
world.
And now this hitherto estranged world is jubilant as if somehow it
has turned the tables on neo-cons. But the world didn’t vote on 4th
November; Americans did. Yet it is behaving in a fashion as if
Barack Obama was its candidate in the American elections as if
through him it sees itself penetrating into the heart of the
emporium: the White House. Just before the elections prominent
columnist, Aijaz Zaka Syed, writing in Khaleej Times, passionately
appealed to the Americans to reject the Republicans in the interest
of the world. Could there be some explanation for all this?
And this comes from the most unlikely of places: Pakistan. Political
economist, Mosharraf Zaidi, wonders at the global brand of Obama.
Tracing the evolution of Obama’s consciousness he recounts: a Kenyan
father, an Indonesian step-father, banker grandmother, a soldier
grand father, a Jewish chief strategist, an Afro-American wife and
two post-Ipod daughters. My friend Professor Adil Najam in Boston
and many others in Pakistani media have discovered that Ann Dunham,
Obama’s mother, had once lived and traveled on our dusty roads, as a
UNDP consultant in Pakistan and even young Obama suffered the heat
of Lahore and Karachi.
The bottom line of all this over active romanticism is that Obama
with his cocktail of genetics and experiences will be representing
the global consciousness, interests of the new age world, inside the
heart of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s empire and in simple
terms will be able to end that mutually destructive relationship
America and the world have been locked in since the Neo-con victory
in Nov 2000.
But is a US president that powerful? Will Obama with his 52 per cent
votes be able to do it? In the Pakistani morning of November 5th, as
the results of Obama landslide started to roll in, I was watching
the joint ABC/BBC broadcast and the anchor was trying to do the same
poetry with Ted Koppel, that indomitable face of ABC for four
generations. With his usual stony face, Koppel, the realist, the
friend of Kissenger, blurted that he sees more of a positive thing
outside and perhaps a reaction inside. A panicked ashen-faced anchor
asked him to focus on the positive moment. Koppel agreed. But the
unmistakable shadows of fear under his expressionless face stayed
with me.
The global dimension of this election is undeniable. True! Obama
benefited from demographic change, energised Afro-Americans and the
economic crisis but an America increasingly isolated from its
traditional allies dominated the minds of most liberal Christian and
Jewish whites; from the beginning Obama and Axel Rod capitalised on
this theme. And the results vindicate them.
Obama victory is in the final analysis a victory of the American
system. Amidst new demographic and global challenges it has shown
the ability to reinvent and redefine itself. Read the columnists
world wide and you will feel that in a curious way America has also
demonstrated that China can be the global production house, India
can provide skilled labour and state of the art back operations;
Middle East and Russia will supply energy and occasional mischief,
Europe is good for history and welfare economics but when it comes
to the synthesis of all this: the leadership of the new age lies
squarely with an America where Christians & Jews, Hindus & Muslims,
humanists and atheists of all colours can work together and
self-actualise.
Where else will you look for global connect and leadership; if not
in a society which represents microcosm of the globe itself? But
this global dimension that provided the essential connect for
Obama’s victory will now also define the challenge. As the
newly-elected President, opposed by 48 per cent of the voters, takes
on the complex challenges of Iraqi withdrawal, negotiations with
Iran, a hopeless war in Afghanistan, a resurgent Russia and securing
the support of Kaplan’s squabbling post-history Europeans he will
find that Axel Rod’s “tightly wrapped campaign” has prepared him
little for keeping both America and the world together on the same
road. Honeymoon ends on January 21st, 2009. Good luck!
—Khaleej Times |
