The Obama-Osama Equation

An eventful couple of weeks began with a somewhat silly thing, the release of Barack Obama’s full birth certificate to prove that he qualifies to hold the job he occupies, then a rather detailed royal extravaganza to show what is really left of Great Britain’s famous royalty, but lastly, a scene straight out of twentieth century Hollywood action movies with seismic ramifications worldwide. The hunt for the most loathed man, at least by America and the civilized world largely was dramatically ended thick in the night in a town named after a British soldier in of all places, Pakistan. More importantly, it came as a result of a surgical operation by American Special Forces sent not by the American President who made a reputation for chasing down terrorists down every nook and crook at whatever cost but by a man who has a Muslim father from Kenya, who grew up in Indonesia. President Obama is either too lucky a president or too meticulous a planner or both. Taunted for being a ‘softie’ democratic contender for president who would not deal decisively with security threats to America the way his predecessor, George Bush liked to – Blitzkrieg away anybody who is suspected along with his family and country (read Iraq and Afghanistan), he is turning out not only as the effective commander in chief but also the one who has the best military gut instinct. Apparently, when everybody was talking about stealth bombers dropping 32 bombs on Bin Laden’s supposed hideout, he chose to do the riskier, but more result oriented approach – fly in, kill the target, take the bounty, id the body to put the conspiracy theorists out of business, collect intelligence information while minimizing risk to your men and finally dispose the body off at sea after following Islamic burial rites. His predecessor must now be wondering how this Lawyer cum community organizer, could make more unsentimental military decisions than you guess who. Far from the drama, however is the bare irony of America’s position today in the global balance of power. While the previous government was busy sending warships and other assortment of sophisticated military hardware to the Middle East, ‘spreading democracy’, ordinary Muslim citizens were getting frustrated with their dictatorial regimes that were either pro-America or anti-America but not pro-their own citizens. Bin Laden tapped into that angst and made a big fuss of it, albeit unsuccessfully. Exit George Bush and enter Barack Obama who is all lovey dovey with the ordinary citizens of Arab countries that Osama looked towards agitating America. But it does not work because he can’t get the leaders out since even fair elections are incomprehensible. The American far right begins to attack the man, accuse him of giving away too much and begin to doubt his ‘american-ness.’ Then, an embarrassed vegetable seller in Tunisia sets himself alight together with the whole region, sending generation-long authoritarian governments tumbling over like a pack of cards or running of scared to bring guns to shoot their own people. In the America of the old, we would expect the American bandwagon to rise up and annihilate the dictators who are not wanted by their own people and spread democracy like a bad disease. But no this American president urges caution, asks his aides to look at each situation case by case and craft a unique approach to each, and when its needed to impose a no-fly zone, he pretends not to want to, lets others take the lead and sends his arsenal to work only to scramble it back to their bases in time before the filthy unreligious dictators start crying out loud “see, it is the American imperialists fighting against Islam.” Remember Saddam Hussein. Like during Obama’s re-election campaign it smells of a familiar sense of dejavu, when you work so hard at something without any particular good results and just as people are beginning to say, we told you that it cannot work, things begin to fall in place. International analysts say that the Arab awakening, as Al Jazeera has aptly named it, makes Osama Bin Laden’s ideology meaningless. At around the same time, America which has long sought to lay their hands on the man, literally stumbles upon him ‘in plain sight’ and in the process embarrasses their strong ally cum geopolitical nemesis Pakistan, by walking in and out with a piece of political Gold. America is supposed to be the faltering super power that can’t get a simple intelligence equation right – right from Saddam’s Weapons of Mass destruction to Osama’s whereabouts. You don’t need to be political analyst or an expert of Global balance of power to tell that Barrack Obama either has a secret sage who tells him to do things that people think are outright wrong but gets to have them for dinner later, or the man is just lucky – a pawn in a game of world politics whose trend nobody is really the master off. Apart from the fact that he was the first black man to rule America and that he has this awe-inspiring speeches, the fellow looks and acts like a very ordinary – dare I say – black intelligent man. But clearly the direction of history has other ideas for him. His near namesake, Osama, who aimed to wow the world by twisting the religion of Obama’s father into America’s Achilles heel and his eventful death, might just be part of the bigger scheme of things that we are yet to see more of. If you had paid Osama to even imagine that a Black American president whose middle name is Hussein would prepare for his death, he would have laughed loud in your face. If you had said the same in America, nine years ago in Times Square, New York just after 9/11, you would have been hit with anti-Islamic vitriol. But, yes it has come to pass. The equation was poignantly put by one New Yorker – Obama 1: Osama 0. kelviod@yahoo.com