Obama's shaky first term is perhaps not surprising, given the turbulent tectonics of his country's politics

First Haiti quaked, then Massachusetts. Konrad Yakabuski said it here last Wednesday: One year into his first term, Barack Obama risks becoming a lame-duck President. Fresh out of his supporters’ enthusiasm, he must struggle to reinvent his presidency in tonight’s State of the Union address.

There are many reasons for Mr. Obama’s near-death experience. The biggest, however, is that he misread the national mood. Having gained the presidency by defeating the lacklustre candidate of a discredited party, Mr. Obama mistook this for a mandate. American voters no longer confer mandates. They merely express their disgruntlement. They were fed up with Republicans, yes, but so were they with Democrats, especially congressional ones. They were fed up with politics as usual. Mr. Obama swept to victory by posing as the candidate of change.

Which he was, unfortunately for him. Mr. Obama had set his sights on the transformation of American society. For most Americans, however, change was a matter of how, not what. Social revolution was the last thing on their minds. They ascribed the failed policies of the Bush years to the glaring defects of a political process dominated by special interests and partisan bickering.

So what did Mr. Obama do? He poured kerosene on both. He rashly decided to pursue health-care reform as the entering wedge of an ambitious agenda. There’s no more complex issue in American politics, none that engages so many contending vested interests, and none so certain to fuel partisan animosity. It’s one hornet’s nest after another. Since most Americans are quite satisfied with the quality of their health care and for that matter their health insurance, they feared to lose more from big changes than they hoped to gain from them. They never warmed to a 2,000-page bill that no one understood but few believed addressed the real problem – medical costs that are out of control.

Because Mr. Obama placed all his political eggs in the basket of resolving this mess, the how of Washington politics has stunk more noisomely than ever. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, nobody’s notion of beacons of a new politics, were reduced to the most appalling shifts. Republicans wouldn’t play ball with them on Mr. Obama’s version of health-care reform, and moderate Democrats lacked all conviction. Hence the last straw of Mr. Reid’s outrageous concessions to colleagues from Nebraska and Louisiana to buy their votes for the measure.

So yes, American voters wanted change, but erred in thinking Mr. Obama would bring the change they wanted. He erred in thinking that his was the change they wanted brought.

Health care was the wrong issue also because there was no short-term health-care crisis – only a long term (fiscal) one  while there was a raging recession. This is the issue that matters most to voters, and Mr. Obama has yet to impress them with his handling of it. No matter that he inherited 7.5-per-cent unemployment: it has risen to and remains stalled at 10 per cent. At that level, paternity ceases to matter. The white working class, which voted for Mr. Obama but has never loved him, is again in play. Scott Brown won Massachusetts as the smooth spokesman of its rough discontents.

Nor can Mr. Obama claim offsetting successes elsewhere. Americans feel not more but less secure from terrorism after his changes on that front. “Engagement” with Iran and the Muslim world generally has achieved precisely nothing. His halfhearted pursuit of the Afghan war has satisfied neither right nor left, while probably emboldening the Taliban. Among America’s allies, the peoples may love Mr. Obama, but the governments smile and sit on their hands. As for greenness issues, they’re browning rapidly, as even Democratic voters become increasingly skeptical of climate change. And will the master of the corporate bailout now take on the corporations? Mr. Obama’s rhetorical cupboard seems bare.

Mr. Obama’s main asset is the disarray of the Republicans. While they now have the additional Senate seat required to block his agenda, their support among voters remains feeble. This isn’t 1994, the year the GOP regained control of Congress after 40 years in the wilderness. There’s no Newt Gingrich, no “Contract with America” – just the discontent that beset George W. Bush, now transferred to Mr. Obama.

You hear that Mr. Obama will seek to beat his opponents at their own game by co-opting their populist rhetoric. (He’s already taken up the cudgel against banks, an easy target and a deserving one.) His anger, however, has never been very terrible. (Perhaps he spent too many years among professors.) And since he can no longer hope to pass legislation (including on banking) without Republican co-operation, how mad can he afford to get?

So keep your fingers crossed for Mr. Obama as he approaches the rostrum tonight. However good the speech, he’ll no longer be delivering it clad in magic. The nation has grown wary of fine speeches that too rarely result in accomplishments. He’ll have little new to offer and nothing old that has worn well. He himself has aged noticeably during his year in office. He had hoped to use this occasion to celebrate the passage of his health-care act; will he now use it to plead for it? If so, not only Republicans will be disinclined to listen. Congressional Democrats, hearing footsteps come November and dogged by grim polling data, won’t be cozying up either.

That it all could have gone so bad so quickly is fodder for a thousand columns. Mr. Obama’s election, far from resolving the turbulent tectonics of American politics, now looks like just another burst of it. The plates they shift still.

The Hindustan Times reports that Suhas Chaudhary’s .38 was not locked, which led to the accidental firing on Saturday. Police report that Chaudhary had just finished his shift of guarding the Taj Mahal Hotel. When he was getting into his vehicle, he removed his gun and accidentally pulled the trigger.

No one else was reported to be injured and neither President Obama nor Michelle Obama were at the hotel when it happened. The bullet grazed Chaudhary’s leg before hitting the ground. He was taken to hospital.

Mumbai police’s crime branch is part of the outer security ring of the president’s three-day visit to the country, which concludes Monday. Obama’s 10-day trip to Asia will then move on to Jakarta, Seoul and Yokohama before he returns to Washington.

Offensive image used to attract web visitors

Google is running an ad above the image that says “Sometimes our search results can be offensive. We agree. Read more.” The ad clicks through to a page where Google clarifies its image and search policy:

Search engines are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the Internet. A site’s ranking in Google’s search results relies heavily on computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page’s relevance to a given query.

We at YBH! think the image is ridiculous.  However, we don’t call for its removal because it is offensive.  The page that hosts it uses the photo to draw in visitors; it’s a sales gimmick and attention-getter, it’s working.   There was an ad for Obama fave J. Crew on the page when we clicked through.  It is not a right wing anti-Obama website, just a page full of ads looking for traffic. 

We must commend Google for not banning the page simply because they disagree with its content.

Google themselves sums it up best:

We apologize if you’ve had an upsetting experience using Google. We hope you understand our position regarding offensive results.

Yes.  It is called free speech, we get it and applaud you for it.

Similar offensive images were common throughout the Bush years.  Mr. Bush was often portrayed as a chimp or a certain German leader of the 20th century.   The bottom line is that with the advent of Photoshop, no one is immune to being modified.

The site itself may get banned from Google for other reasons.  For example,  Google may find out that the website somehow “spammed” or used black-hat techniques to get so prominent a position for the much-searched term “Michelle Obama.”  Google hates spam, and the company has a reputation for being merciless toward those that attempt to manipulate its search results.

A search of Microsoft’s Bing search engine’s image section turns up no controversial images of Ms. Obama.  In fact Bing’s results look like they were taken directly from a Vogue magazine shoot.

This undated US Consulate photo out of Leipzig, Germany shows Farah Pandith

Clinton “has asked me to find ways to build strong partnerships and create new connections and join together with grass roots organizations to effect positive change,” she said after swearing on the Koran to carry out her duties.

“Under the leadership of Secretary Clinton, the Department of State is recalibrating the way in which we work with Muslim communities around the world,” Pandith said.

“Though this office, we will engage Muslim communities to solve collaboratively the most pressing problems facing these communities around the world,” Pandith said.

Clinton said Pandith’s office, which will both advise the secretary and the State Department, will focus on a broad array of issues.

“This is a dialogue that is not going to focus solely on terrorism or radicalization, but instead, focus on what all of us have in common, what we all hope for our children,” Clinton said at the ceremony.

It will also deal with broader problems like poverty, hunger, climate change and corruption which are “not unique to any part of the world,” Clinton said.

“In addition to these broad challenges, we have to focus on concerns of specific Muslim communities,” she said.

“How are we going to get more investment into Iraq and put people who want to work back to work? How are we going to engage with young Muslims in Europe who feel marginalized or disassociated from their communities?” Clinton asked.

“How do we make sure that the message we send from our country is not just government to government, but people to people, community to community?” the chief US diplomat said.

Pandith immigrated to the United States as a child from Indian Kashmir’s summer capital, Srinagar. Previously she worked in the European bureau as a special adviser for outreach to Muslim communities in Europe.

In his inauguration speech on January 20, President Barack Obama vowed to seek a “new way forward” with the Muslim world “based on mutual interest and respect,” after eight rocky years under his predecessor George W. Bush.

Mr. Obama also said that people will have to fundamentally reject the notion that violence is the way to mediate differences among them.

“I think all of us have to fundamentally reject the notion that violence is the way to mediate our differences,” he added.

The US president expressed these views when a Muslim student A. Ansari lobbed a question asking for his views on ‘jihad” during his interaction with students of St Xavier’s college here.

“I think all of us recognise that this great religion (Islam) in the hands of a few extremists has been distorted to justify violence towards innocent people that is never justified,” he said.

“So, one of the challenges the world faces is how to “isolate” those who have these distorted notions of religious war…and reaffirm those who see faces of all sorts whether you are a Hindu or a Muslim or a Christian and a Jew or any other religion that we can all treat each other with respect and mutual dignity,” he added.

Mr. Obama said the phrase ‘Jihad’ has different interpretations. Islam is one of the great religions and majority of its one billion practices believe in peace, justice and tolerance, he added.

The President also said the existence of diverse religious beliefs was a “major challenge” not only in India but also around the world.

He said the youth of the world can make a huge impact in re-affirming that one can be a strong observer of one’s faith without putting somebody else down or visiting violence on somebody else.

Religious tolerance is necessary in a world that is getting smaller and smaller where more and more people of different backgrounds, different races, and different ethnicities are interacting and working and learning from each other, Mr. Obama added.

The first one we met was Barack the radical progressive, in his primary campaign against Hillary. Then in the general election we were introduced to the centrist Obama, who promised to invade Pakistan if need be, called for an end to partisanship, and lectured about fiscal sobriety.

Then with congressional majorities, soaring public support, and obsequious media attention came the leftist ideologue President Obama, who tried to ram through a statist health-care regime, gobbled up private enterprises, and gave us Anita Dunn and Van Jones.

Now we are back to sorta centrist Obama, who is going to fight terror, not apologize any more to the Muslim world, and freeze spending rather than give us another $2 trillion in debt.

These serial reset Obamas are quite astonishing even for a politician.

Take the examples of public advocate Obama’s once idealistic promotion of C-SPAN broadcasts of the health-care debate, and Obama’s current fiery lamentations over the Supreme Court decision overturning elements of the McCain-Feingold limitations on corporate campaign donations.

But Obama, the current reformer, seems to be railing at Obama, the cynical backroom organizer, who would never dare televise anything about his thousand-page health-care mess. Yet Obama II not only nixed Obama I’s repeated promises of C-SPAN debates, but outsourced his health-care bill to congressional insiders, who did more backroom-dealing, vote-buying, and quid-pro-quoing than at any other time in recent memory.

So there is no consistency even in the flip-flopping. Obama III as the sudden guardian of campaign-financing curbs is antithetical to Obama I, the rejectionist of any government interference. In 2008 Obama I destroyed the idea of public campaign financing of presidential elections. Indeed, in his efforts to raise a billion dollars of private money, Obama became the first presidential candidate in the general election in over 30 years to back out of public financing, an idea which is now more or less kaput.

So what is the present-day Obama III? Nothing and everything. We have no idea whether he is against corporate campaign contributions, given Obama I/II’s voracious appetite for them. Will he accept public campaign financing in the future? Only if his money machine stalls? Is C-SPAN necessary for or irrelevant to public debate?

Take also terrorism. Obama 1.0, the champion of civil liberties, based the entire foreign-policy side of his 2007–08 campaign on the notion of George W. Bush’s shredding the Constitution in his unnecessary War on Terror and his venture into Iraq. Obama at one time or another attacked almost every Bush protocol — e.g., renditions (“shipping away prisoners in the dead of night”), military tribunals (“flawed military commission system”), preventive detention (“detaining thousands without charge or trial”), the surge of troops into Iraq (“not working”), the Patriot Act (“shoddy and dangerous”). We were to have all combat troops out of Iraq by August 2010, and Guantanamo (“a legal black hole,” “a sad chapter in American history,” “a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus”) closed last week. Predator strikes, according to candidate Obama, recklessly terrorized civilians.

But Obama 2.0 seemed to be ignoring Obama 1.0. Our realist president embraced renditions and tribunals, still held terrorists in preventive detention, kept troops in Iraq, championed the Patriot Act, and apparently counted on Guantanamo to stay open. Three days after he took office Obama ordered our first reported Hellfire missile attacks inside Pakistan itself.

And Obama 3.0? His team renamed the War on Terror “overseas contingency operations” and “man-caused disasters,” dithered on troop escalations in Afghanistan, allowed his attorney general to go after CIA interrogators, gave the Christmas Day al-Qaeda would-be mass murderer his Miranda rights, and plans to try in a civilian court the architect of 9/11 a few blocks from where his evil genius led to the incineration of 3,000 Americans. But wait — Obama 3.0 has also belatedly expanded the war in Afghanistan, has vastly increased the controversial judge/jury/executioner Predator attacks, and is talking more about terror and less about the mythical achievements of the Muslim world. That’s quite an abyss to bridge — insisting that a known mass murderer like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gets his Miranda rights while blasting to smithereens suspected terrorists and their families in their living rooms in Pakistan.

Obama versus Obama versus Obama could be played out in almost any venue. In 2008 he was the candidate who, in response to the McCain-Palin “Drill, baby, drill” mantra during the energy-price spike, supported more drilling, expansion of nuclear power, and using all our energy resources. Then, in the euphoria of early 2009, it was to be cap-and-trade and the solar/wind vision of Van Jones. Now there is a nothing-and-everything energy policy, apparently depending on the polls and the price of energy at any given moment.

Candidate Obama warned that the “Bush deficits” would cripple his imaginative spending agenda. Yet President Obama damned the red-ink torpedoes and went full speed ahead into far greater deficits, resulting in an addition to the national debt of nearly $2 trillion in his first year alone. Yet reset-button Obama is already calling for a national commission to freeze (some) spending and “address” the spiraling deficit.

Two observations. First, there is a hazy pattern to the Obama tri-step: soar with progressive platitudes when there is no responsibility of governance; then as president slowly learn that a center-right country is not ready to blame itself for radical Islam or destroy the private-sector entrepreneurship that made America wealthy beyond imagination; and end up with an ad hoc, poll-driven policy of everything and nothing.

The problem with Obama 1-2-3 is that progressives rightly feel betrayed and now see their once-in-a-century savior exposed as an inept triangulator, without the Machiavellian savvy of Bill Clinton or the input of Dick Morris.

Conservatives, however, who should appreciate that Obama is still fighting in Afghanistan and has kept the Bush anti-terrorism protocols, are enraged about the KSM trial, the Abdulmutallab mess, and the demagoguing about the CIA and Guantanamo.

Second, this absence of consistency, of identity even, was entirely predictable — given what the nation knew of newcomer candidate Barack Obama in the brief two-year period we were introduced to him.

He sermonized on purple-state America after compiling the most partisan record in the Senate. He talked of political and racial reconciliation, while assembling the most radically divisive cast of intimates imaginable — Bill Ayers, Rashid Khalidi, the Rev. James Meeks, Father Michael Pfleger, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He soared about a new transparency, but unlike rival McCain never fully released his medical records, his college transcripts, or the details of his Senate race.

If we do not know who Barack Obama is, that may be because Barack Obama does not know who Barack Obama is. Barry Dunham? Barry Soetoro? Barack Soetoro? Barry Obama? Barack Obama?

Is he the racial healer who called his own ailing grandmother a “typical white person”? The white middle-class prep-schooler, or the authentically African-American community organizer?

The hip, yuppie multicultural agnostic — or the devotee of the them/us wacky old-time religion of Trinity Church?

The working-class populist who ridiculed the culture of rural Pennsylvania?

The modern-day Cicero who needs a teleprompter?

The Harvard Law graduate and Chicago law professor who gets confused about everything from Cinco de Mayo to the number of states? The Chicago progressive who regularly voted present? The reformist Senate candidate whose rivals in both the primary and general elections mysteriously found their divorce records leaked?

By pleasing his immediate audience with his mellifluous rhetoric and clichés about his racial transcendence, Obama has always charmed his way up his cursus honorum. Why worry about the nonexistent record, broken promises, empty platitudes, and self-contradictions when his mesmerized audiences believed that he believed in them, and lapped up the inexpensive absolutions for their assorted past sins?

The only catch is that Barack Obama no longer navigates among gullible Ivy League deans, naïve philanthropists, and inept organizers and bureaucrats. No, he is running a country that still has millions of no-nonsense truckers, teachers, small-business owners, and general skeptics who don’t give a damn about either Harvard or Chicago. And in their eyes, after a year, the game is about up.

Yet in a weird sort of consistency, Obama remains what he always was. Whatever we choose to see in this glass mirror, he will sorta, kinda reflect our vision.

Obama is our first everything-and-nothing president.

By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online

The survey, conducted by the Washington-based International Republican Institute, underscored the difficulties the Obama administration faced in its efforts to tamp down Islamic militancy in this strategically vital nation.

The I.R.I. is a nonprofit pro-democracy group affiliated with the Republican Party and financed by the American government.

President Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of the slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and a relatively inexperienced politician, scored a 25 percent approval rating how he’s handling his job, 6 points more than in March.

His chief opponent, Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, garnered a 67 percent favorable rating, down from 75 percent in March.The findings come as Washington is poised to spend $1.5 billion in assistance for Pakistan in the coming year, a big jump in American funds intended to help strengthen the civilian government rather than the military.

The poll confirms the persistent strand of anti-American discourse in Pakistan in the last few years, and its release coincides with particularly strong attacks in the Pakistani media about the American Embassy’s hiring private security firms to protect American diplomats.

Even as the Obama administration takes pride in the new funds for Pakistan, the increased aid has been criticized in the Pakistani news media and among politicians as too little, one calling it “peanuts.”

Face-to-face interviews were conducted July 15 to Aug. 7 with 4,900 adults throughout Pakistan’s four provinces, excluding areas in the North-West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus one percentage point. The survey results will be available on the institute’s Web site, www.iri.org, on Friday. The I.R.I. has conducted surveys in Pakistan since 2002.

A troubling aspect of the findings for the Obama administration, analysts said, was the significant increase in the rejection of the United States as a partner in the war against Islamic militants.

According to the poll, 80 percent of the respondents said they were opposed to United States assistance in Pakistan’s fight against terrorism, a 19 percentage-point increase since the last survey conducted by the institute in March.

The survey says that 76 percent of the respondents were opposed to Pakistan partnering with the United States on missile attacks against extremists by American drone aircraft. Such strikes have been under way for several years against militants from Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the tribal areas, and have recently intensified.

An American missile from a drone aircraft killed Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban in August, a strike that was assisted by Pakistani intelligence, officials said

There were various reasons for the harsh attitude toward the United States, even as the Obama administration tried to reach out to Muslim nations, said Kamran Khan, a prominent journalist and the anchor of the most widely watched television news show.

“Most Pakistanis are exposed to the popular media and to extremist clerics who provide this perception,” Mr. Khan said. “The American side of the story is not available to the people.”

The American military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq colored Pakistani views of the United States, Mr. Khan said. “The United States is seen as an occupying force and moving unilaterally against Muslim nations.”

Although Mr. Obama was perceived as more “trustworthy and plain speaking,” Mr. Khan said these attributes were not enough to outweigh the hostility to American policies.

In order to improve American standing in Pakistan, the special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, had ordered an overhaul of the public diplomacy programs and was sending several seasoned diplomats to bolster the embassy, a senior American official said.

A public affairs strategy centered on the American desire for a strong relationship with Pakistan and focused on describing the common enemy as Al Qaeda and the Taliban was about to begin, the official said.

The new effort included spending about $30 million on educational and cultural exchanges between Pakistan and the United States, and providing more Fulbright scholarships for Pakistanis to study at American universities.

Rajiv Pratap Rudy, a spokesman for the opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP, said President Obama “missed the first opportunity of striking a chord with the 100 crore people of India.”
Rudy said that the BJP expected a “sharp, categorical statement against Pakistan.”

“It was the first address by the US President at a place which saw the biggest terror attack on India,” Rudy said. “It was a complete disappointment as the world and United States had proof that the attack was planned on Pakistani soil by its intelligence agencies. He had words which were not backed with action and intent,”

But within hours BJP backed off Rudy’s statement. The Times of India described Rudy’s comments as “ill-considered and hasty” and having “left top party leaders red-faced.”

A White House official says that “the President knew that he would have multiple opportunities on this trip to talk about Pakistan. His remarks at the Taj were about honoring those who were lost and showing our solidarity with India in combating terrorism.”

Others clearly disagreed with Rudy. Farang Jehani — who owns the Leopold Café and Bar, where 10 people were killed — was quoted in the Hindustan Times saying “I was not disappointed that the President did not mention Pakistan in his speech. There are diplomatic ways of putting things, and everyone knew who he was talking about. He didn’t need to mention who was behind the attack.”

“He acknowledged every Indian who helped others during the siege, by saying we weren’t held back by caste, creed or religion, that we held together when we as a nation were attacked,” said Jehani. “I think his speech was extremely positive and signaled a growing friendship between India and the United States.”

Still, Rudy’s reaction was not in a vacuum.

India Today quotes stock broker Dilip Samant saying that “To visit a 26/ 11 memorial and not mention Pakistan as a perpetrator of the worst terror act in India is not only ridiculous, it is humiliating to the memory of those who died that day. … Had Obama mentioned Pakistan in his speech even obliquely, it could had assuaged some anger that we Mumbaikars feel.”

Former Maharashtra bureaucrat Avinash Hazare told the newspaper that he doesn’t think the president nor “his policymakers appreciate Mumbaikars’ anger over 26/ 11 or the fact that the anger has not been doused.” Obama had warms words for the city, though, and the role its citizens played during the siege.

Barack Obama

The US President Barack Hussein Obama was recently selected for the Nobel Peace Prize 2009 by the Prize Committee in Oslo. This biggest peace prize would be presented to Obama in Norway on 10th December later this year. This prize contains an amount of $1.5 million besides the medal. This award is given to Obama for his initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said that President Obama is imagining of a nuclear weapons free world. The way he has given importance to diplomacy over war is also commendable. The Committee felt that the world is impressed by these humanist and peaceful initiatives of Obama and has got a hope for a bright future. These unprecedented initiatives of Obama within his short tenure of nine months have really contributed towards changing the global image of USA to some extent.

Just after the announcement of Obama’s name for prize, the debate started in the entire world. While the people imagining a peaceful world are calling it a good decision, there is no dearth of people criticising the decision. Critics are saying that just to talk about peace is not enough. There should be substantial, creative and consequential steps in this direction. Critics are of the view if Obama is talking about a nuclear free world, then what is the need to increase the aid of a country like Pakistan which is the centre of terrorism. If this is an attempt to improve his image among the Muslim nations, then why Obama’s stand is not clear on the most disputed issue of Palestine-Israel conflict. Critics feel that though Obama is a good orator and gives attractive speeches about establishing peace, but no result has yet come out of his initiatives.

The question is whether the critics’ view is justifiable. To understand this, if we compare Obama’s short tenure of nine months with his predecessor George Bush’s tenure of 8 years, then it would be clear whether Obama really deserves Nobel or not. People have still in mind the post-9/11 declaration of Bush, when he said that there are just two ways for the world community. Either they are with me (USA) or with them (Taliban/Al Qaeda). The world must have memories of the concept of the “Clash of Civilisations” between Islam and Christianity, which strengthened during the Bush regime. The world also witnessed closely, the illegal intrusion of American forces in Iraq. While the world was worried by the ever deteriorating conditions in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was equally concerned for an eventual attack on Iran by the Bush administration.

But today, just after nine months tenure of Obama administration, the peace loving people of the world are at least sure that there would not be another Afghanistan or Iraq during Obama regime, notwithstanding Obama’s current way of rectifying blunders of previous administration. Rejecting the concept of “Clash of Civilisations” during the historical speech in Cairo earlier this year, when Obama started with “as-salaamun- alay-kum”, the world understood about his intentions. The US, which is proud of its weapons, nobody had ever imagined that the President of that country would ever talk about nuclear weapons free world. But Obama has created a hope by talking about his ambition.

As far as the aid to Pakistan is concerned, undoubtedly Pakistan has repeatedly diverted such aid for promoting and exporting terrorism to neighbouring countries such as India. This is not just an allegation by the Indian leaders and officers, in fact this is confessed by the former Pak President Parvez Musharraf too. But for the present aid, the US has put a system in place for continuously monitoring the expenditure of aid and this should also be taken into account by the critics. Even though, Pakistan spread terrorism since long time, the same terrorism is today out of control of the state of Pakistan and has become headache for the entire world. In this situation, if America is funding Pakistan for fighting terrorists like Taliban, it should be assumed as a step for the purpose of establishing peace by eliminating terrorism.

Regarding the argument that Nobel Peace Prize should be given for actions and not just for talks, this argument is not sustainable because the person who has largely changed the image of America within nine months of his tenure, the world should certainly have expectations from such person. In response to the hand of peace extended by Obama, countries like Iran and North Korea too should reply in same manner. All the Muslim countries should also shun the anti-American glasses and accept the present day as truth and cooperate with Obama in building a peaceful world.

American people too deserve compliments for their power of vote through which they elected Barack Hussein Obama as first non-white President of the US, who has, for the time being, changed the atmosphere of the world by calling for world peace and nuclear disarmament.