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Obama shames opponents
Ken Chaplin
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Senator Barack Obama, the African American who is now in a close race with Senator Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party's nomination to contest the November 2008 presidential race, was riding high again last week after some American politicians and media tried to beat him down.
First, he delivered what many Americans, including his opponents in the Republican Party, thought was one of the most profound statements, both from a historical and contemporary perspective, on the issue of race in the United States. The speech started a re-examination of the suffering of black people under racial discrimination and segregation, and their struggle to penetrate the white blockade. One can well understand the anger of the black man in America today. Those of us who have frequently toured the US south over the past 60 years have been appalled at the conditions under which the majority of many African Americans live.
Next, his opposition to the war in Iraq from the very beginning while Senator Clinton and the Republican Party's nominee, Senator John McCain supported it, gained a new dimension and exemplified his solid judgement. The war is now being opposed by an overwhelming majority of Americans. The war is costing Americans dearly, both in lives and money.
Sources in the USA say 4,000 American servicemen have been killed and 27,000 injured. The total cost is nearly US$3 trillion. That money could have been used to build schools and houses, provide a first-class health service and used to do a lot of other things, opponents of the war say. The Iraqi side has lost an estimated 100,000 killed. There were protests across America on the fifth anniversary of the war last Wednesday.
This column also opposed the war. In the January 28, 2003 edition of the Daily Observer, under the headline, "Don't rush, Mr Bush", the column said, "The threat of another Gulf War should be of concern to Jamaica because it will bring increases in the price of oil to us which will have an impact on the price of gasoline and electricity, among other things.
President George Bush is showing undue haste in wanting to declare war on Iraq." (A war backed by Britain.) All the other major powers including France, Germany, Russia and China, the column said, like 50 per cent of Americans (according to a Gallup poll) preferred the United Nations' weapons inspectors to be given more time to complete their task of determining whether Iraq had or was developing weapons of mass destruction, the column said. It seemed that Mr Bush was bent on finding Iraq guilty without any evidence, the column added. It is now history that the USA and its allies attacked Iraq which has come to haunt the Americans. Until today no weapon of mass destruction has been found, although the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was captured and later executed.
Obama's opposition to the war increased his popularity in the contest with Clinton for the Democratic Party's nomination for the presidential election. He began his campaign by scrupulously avoiding the race issue and was doing well on all fronts until Mrs Clinton accused the media of favouring Obama. Her camp exploited the race issue and his standing began to fall. Many of his supporters were unhappy that he turned the other cheek for more slaps instead of counter-attacking. Then Rev Jeremiah Wright, Obama's former pastor, delivered a fiery sermon in which he traced the oppression of blacks since slavery. Much of what he said is true, but he also said other things which were highly inflammatory and unacceptable. Although Obama condemned Rev Wright for some of his comments, this was not enough to satisfy some of his racist detractors. They wanted Obama to denounce and disown his former minister who showed him the way to Christianity. They spoke as if it was Obama who had prepared and handed the script to the Rev Wright. The angry minister spoke on his own volition and is, after all, entitled to free speech.
The oppression of blacks will remain an indelible blot on US history, although there has been a phenomenal rise of many of them over the past 60 years. The sermon, however, gave Clinton's camp the opening it wanted to launch a racial onslaught against Obama, however preposterous. The conservative media turned against him. For example, popular CNN commentator Lou Dobbs asked whether Obama had come to fool the white people. Fox News condemned him for his 20 years' relationship with Rev Wright and the church. As was expected, Obama's ratings declined, but he appears to be bouncing back. It later transpired that Bill Clinton had attended Wright's church in 1998 or 1999, exchanged greetings and shaken hands with him.
However, Obama regained some momentum after his masterful speech. Some say it was like a presidential address. Others noted that it was like a university lecture. He spoke about the US Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a constitution that promised its people liberty and justice and a union that could be and should be perfected over time. He continued: "And yet words from a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every colour and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time." This, Obama said, was "one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of the campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America".
Obama said he chose to run for the presidency now because he believed deeply that "we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together, unless we perfect our union, understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not have looked the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren." This belief comes from his unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from his own American story. It was a speech that put Obama's opponents to shame and moved Bill Richardson, New Mexico's powerful and influencial governor, to endorse him as the Democratic Party's nominee for the presidential election.
Ken Chaplin
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Senator Barack Obama, the African American who is now in a close race with Senator Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party's nomination to contest the November 2008 presidential race, was riding high again last week after some American politicians and media tried to beat him down.
First, he delivered what many Americans, including his opponents in the Republican Party, thought was one of the most profound statements, both from a historical and contemporary perspective, on the issue of race in the United States. The speech started a re-examination of the suffering of black people under racial discrimination and segregation, and their struggle to penetrate the white blockade. One can well understand the anger of the black man in America today. Those of us who have frequently toured the US south over the past 60 years have been appalled at the conditions under which the majority of many African Americans live.
Next, his opposition to the war in Iraq from the very beginning while Senator Clinton and the Republican Party's nominee, Senator John McCain supported it, gained a new dimension and exemplified his solid judgement. The war is now being opposed by an overwhelming majority of Americans. The war is costing Americans dearly, both in lives and money.
Sources in the USA say 4,000 American servicemen have been killed and 27,000 injured. The total cost is nearly US$3 trillion. That money could have been used to build schools and houses, provide a first-class health service and used to do a lot of other things, opponents of the war say. The Iraqi side has lost an estimated 100,000 killed. There were protests across America on the fifth anniversary of the war last Wednesday.
This column also opposed the war. In the January 28, 2003 edition of the Daily Observer, under the headline, "Don't rush, Mr Bush", the column said, "The threat of another Gulf War should be of concern to Jamaica because it will bring increases in the price of oil to us which will have an impact on the price of gasoline and electricity, among other things.
President George Bush is showing undue haste in wanting to declare war on Iraq." (A war backed by Britain.) All the other major powers including France, Germany, Russia and China, the column said, like 50 per cent of Americans (according to a Gallup poll) preferred the United Nations' weapons inspectors to be given more time to complete their task of determining whether Iraq had or was developing weapons of mass destruction, the column said. It seemed that Mr Bush was bent on finding Iraq guilty without any evidence, the column added. It is now history that the USA and its allies attacked Iraq which has come to haunt the Americans. Until today no weapon of mass destruction has been found, although the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was captured and later executed.
Obama's opposition to the war increased his popularity in the contest with Clinton for the Democratic Party's nomination for the presidential election. He began his campaign by scrupulously avoiding the race issue and was doing well on all fronts until Mrs Clinton accused the media of favouring Obama. Her camp exploited the race issue and his standing began to fall. Many of his supporters were unhappy that he turned the other cheek for more slaps instead of counter-attacking. Then Rev Jeremiah Wright, Obama's former pastor, delivered a fiery sermon in which he traced the oppression of blacks since slavery. Much of what he said is true, but he also said other things which were highly inflammatory and unacceptable. Although Obama condemned Rev Wright for some of his comments, this was not enough to satisfy some of his racist detractors. They wanted Obama to denounce and disown his former minister who showed him the way to Christianity. They spoke as if it was Obama who had prepared and handed the script to the Rev Wright. The angry minister spoke on his own volition and is, after all, entitled to free speech.
The oppression of blacks will remain an indelible blot on US history, although there has been a phenomenal rise of many of them over the past 60 years. The sermon, however, gave Clinton's camp the opening it wanted to launch a racial onslaught against Obama, however preposterous. The conservative media turned against him. For example, popular CNN commentator Lou Dobbs asked whether Obama had come to fool the white people. Fox News condemned him for his 20 years' relationship with Rev Wright and the church. As was expected, Obama's ratings declined, but he appears to be bouncing back. It later transpired that Bill Clinton had attended Wright's church in 1998 or 1999, exchanged greetings and shaken hands with him.
However, Obama regained some momentum after his masterful speech. Some say it was like a presidential address. Others noted that it was like a university lecture. He spoke about the US Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a constitution that promised its people liberty and justice and a union that could be and should be perfected over time. He continued: "And yet words from a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every colour and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time." This, Obama said, was "one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of the campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America".
Obama said he chose to run for the presidency now because he believed deeply that "we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together, unless we perfect our union, understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not have looked the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren." This belief comes from his unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from his own American story. It was a speech that put Obama's opponents to shame and moved Bill Richardson, New Mexico's powerful and influencial governor, to endorse him as the Democratic Party's nominee for the presidential election.
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