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No "Real World" Decisions Yet

Mike

Well-known member
Obama hasn't made a real world decision
By Greg Sheridan
The Sunday Telegraph/Australia
March 01, 2009 12:01am

BARACK Obama remains as popular as ever. After a month in office, it may not be that the seas have stopped rising, it certainly is not the fact that the economy has got better, and there is no evidence of the planet healing. But the Obama promise remains undimmed.
Smiling, smooth, sweet as honey, Obama is universally adored. Even Sean Penn compliments his nation for having the courage to elect - wait for it - an "elegant" man as president.

Greater love hath popular culture for no politician than that it honours him with reverential references at the Academy Awards. Cool, hip, no-drama Obama - for a moment, just perhaps for a global moment, it's funky to love America again.

I certainly don't begrduge Obama this.

Yet eventually Obama will have to deal with substantial issues in substance.

Can you stop the mullahs of Iran getting a nuclear bomb by the winning power of your smile? Can you keep the Islamist extremists away from Pakistan's dozens of nuclear weapons because you no longer embody white colonial power Will China sign on to a greenhouse gas reduction target because of the cut of your suit?

The day will come soon, when Obama will have to take the decisions which mean somebody wins and somebody loses. The folks that lose won't like him any more.

The first month or so has been mostly celebratory, even in foreign policy, but the signals on substance are a bit mixed.

Let me give you four examples.

Hillary Clinton made her first overseas trip as Secretary of State to Asia. No Secretary of State has done this for nearly 50 years. Good move, gal.

And she went first to Japan, to emphasise the importance of the US-Japan military alliance.

She also went to South Korea and Indonesia, where she was a big hit. She made a good speech hailing things the US and China could work together on, and calling on China to improve its human rights performance.

But once in Beijing, she got the tone all wrong. She didn't talk about human rights and said that doing so would be no good because the Chinese knew what she'd say, and they wouldn't take any notice. This is worse than just lame. She also sounded like a mendicant, begging the Chinese to keep buying US bonds.

Example two is Obama's interview on Arab TV. It was virtually an extended apology to the Muslim world on behalf of the US, pretty unbecoming. It's one thing for Obama to diss his predecessor, George W Bush. It's another thing to validate the pervasive conspiracy theories and paranoia of the Muslim world by essentially accepting the inaccurate idea that the US has been anti-Muslim.

Not only that, eventually Obama will demonstrate his support for Israel, and his interview will look, hypocritical.

Third, there is Obama's decision that the US will continue, so far, to participate in preparations for the second big UN anti-racism conference. The previous one, in Durban, in 2001, was hijacked by the worst regimes in the world and became a festival of anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli and anti-American hatred. Obama gives no moral lead by lending his authority to a replay.

Finally, there's the tone of his speeches. He keeps saying that the only thing he'll be judged on is the US economy. It's understandable he emphasises the economy at the moment but inevitably, he will have to lead the Americans through big foreign policy issues, having told them foreign policy doesn't really count.

It's too early to judge Obama yet. He is a gifted politician. But he'll have to do a bit better than this first month if he's really going to make the world a better place.
 
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