Obama Opportunity Squandered? - 01 Feb 11

A great opportunity (as I see it) is right on our doorstep and it will be, very unfortunately, squandered. I do not see that there is anything we can do whatsoever about making something worthwhile out of the situation that confronts us.

It seems to me from what video I have seen on the world and broadcast channels that the people of the Mid-East feel that they have a friend in Barack Obama. It looks to me very much like the roar that was raised overseas when the Nobel Prize was announced. They feel like there is a kinship there that probably doesn’t actually exist. The race issue may be the link; I do not know but it just seems to me to be the most direct link.

Every broadcast I have seen there has been just as many Pro-Obama signs and there has been Anti-Mubarak signs. It could be they the press is leading me astray but I don’t think so in this case. They haven’t seemed to make the link.

In any event, here we sit – probably on our thumbs. What can we do? All the diplomats that I have seen and heard interviewed have stated that we are diplomatically trapped between the preverbal rock and hard spot. If we support Mabarak and he topples; we have made the wrong choice. If we support the protestors and Mubarak prevails; we have made the wrong choice. Can we just sit it out? Probably not for long.

Wouldn’t it be nice for our leader to be the one with all the right answers for a change – lately this hasn’t been the case. It should make no difference witch party our leader stands with. This is a REAL opportunity for world leadership and in this case Barack Obama is exactly the right leader at the exact right time and the exact right place. Like it or not, not one of any of our recent presidents have had this unique kinship with the populous of that region of the world – not one. Mr. Obama is it – the only it.

I hope there are great minds thinking this through and I hope that those great minds are seriously working the right and appropriate angles. Let’s hope they make the right choices.