Is President Obama wavering?

Feb 27, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

In one of my essays on Barack Obama before his election, I did make the point that leaders can come to power and backslide on the promises that drove voters to embrace them. I offered examples. The examples are literally endless. One hopes deeply in one’s heart that Barack Obama does not fall by the wayside with a deceptive art that can only lead in that direction.

This man became a global phenomenon. Billions, not millions, like him, adore him and see him as an agent of universal change for the better of the world.
This week President Obama’s slip was showing. And he got some bruising for it by three powerful and influential media practitioners who no doubt contributed to his electoral success. They are Chris Mathews, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.

Ms. Maddow was very severe on the President and I am sure Mr. Obama, knowing her style, would not have been surprised. Mr. Obama is definitely in a controversy and his charisma and popularity are not going to extricate him. Only one thing can do that for him –his genius. And not even that may help him.
The issue involves his open backtracking on a campaign promise that probably led him to the White House. Mr. Obama campaigned with unlimited vigour against the continuation of the Iraqi war. He told all his supporters that he will end the war and bring American troops back to the US.

Mr. Obama and his advisers cannot be that myopic or dishonest not to know that this bandwagon catapulted him into the hearts and minds of voters.
Mr. Obama did not win the elections because he was African-American. I’m afraid that is not why white Americans rooted for him. He got the youth vote because he appeared as the more radical candidate than Mrs. Clinton and John Mc Cain.

He got the women vote because the Clintons sided with him. He was endorsed by white liberal voters because they wanted nothing to do with conservative America and their leaders as personified by George Bush. Finally, he got to the White House because nothing good was happening to George Bush in the last year of his presidency. The Iraqi war brought down its two architects, George Bush and Tony Blair.
American voters did not want a continuation of the fire in Iraq. Most of the people who voted against John Mc Cain voted for an end to the battle in Iraq.

Mr. Obama never sided with the Iraqi invasion. As a junior Senator, he voted again the intervention. He knew he had a solid platform against Mrs. Clinton because she voted with Bush to invade Iraq. He knew he had the upper hand against the Republicans because the war was America’s nemesis.
All over the US during the campaign, Mr. Obama’s mantra was that he would end the war and bring home the troops. His radicalism reached its zenith when he shaped a time-table of withdrawal. He said sixteen months from the day he took office.

This week was not a good moment for Obama fans. First, he pushed back the date to nineteen months. Then he did a thing that could be seen as deceptive. This got Ms. Maddow furious and she let her fury show on her show. Mr. Obama informed the American people that he will retain more than 55,000 non-combatant troops in Iraqi until the deadline for withdrawal of all personnel as spelt out by Mr. Bush.
In other words, Mr. Obama’s framework resembles Mr. Bush or may be identical. Mr. Olbermann and Ms. Maddow want to know if there is a distinction between combatant and non-combatant soldiers. Is Mr. Obama trying to deceive the world when he makes that distinction? Was he talking evasively when he made that point?

Mr. Obama will have to tell his voters where the money is going to come from to feed those large numbers that will remain in Iraq.
So what happened? It is obvious that Mr. Obama invoked the wrath of the most powerful institution in the top industrial countries in the world – the military establishment referred to in sociological literature as the military-industrial complex.

From Turkey to Brazil taking in the UK, US, France, Russia, the military establishment is an untouchable institution that has little respect for Prime Ministers and President who think they can pontificate on war and military matters.
They are a law unto themselves. They tried to overthrow Harold Wilson, the British PM because they thought he was too left-leaning. They may be the real conspirators in the Kennedy assassination. Mr. Obama should have stood up to them. He led us to believe he would.

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Is President Obama wavering?

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