Near the end of Obama’s inaugural address was this stirring rhetoric:
“To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”
I have steadfastly supported Obama as the least unattractive of all the candidates (despite his overt pandering to Israel), ever since his speech to the DNC in 2004, but what few will bother to contemplate on this festive day is that “those leaders” and “those who cling to power” are by and large leading and clinging to power “through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent,” courtesy of the continuous meddling of these United States and its Western cronies. For an account of how these Western leaders, Berlusconi and Olmert and Sarkozy, are all smiles for the cameras while bodies still rot in the wreckage of Gaza, read Fisk’s latest: http://tinyurl.com/823a2v
The king is gone; long live the king.