America, Greatness Regained ?

Ravi PERERA

Barrack Obama likes to tell the story of his 2006 meeting with a frail Ethel Kennedy the widow of Robert Kennedy at the funeral of Coretta King. At one point the grand lady who was seated next to the presidential hopeful leaned across and whispered "the torch is being passed to you". Obama says "a chill went up my spine"

To be chosen the torch bearer of the political heritage of the Democratic Party is understandably an overwhelming experience. America is a country whose greatness is attributed mainly to its rugged individualism. To represent the liberal instinct when all around one are monuments to the success of individual endeavour is to remind ourselves of the human frailties and the imperfections of our systems and institutions. It is to point to the strugglers, many of them laggards, and say they also matter. It is also the courage to stand up for beliefs, attitudes and positions which in the hurly-burly of life often seem contradictory if not ephemeral. If America has to go to war its leader, however liberal, must lead his troops.

Despite all its evident greatness, like all nations America too has bad memories. Public lynching was common in the early days of the republic while until quite recently segregation was an accepted fact of life. The internment of the entire Japanese American community during the Second World War was a close parallel to the Nazi methods in Europe. That terrible war ended with America dropping the Atomic bomb on two civilian targets in Japan, the populated cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even today, America is in violation of its professed lofty standards in the detention camps of Guantanamo.

America by no means is a repository of private virtues and public probity.

No country and for that matter no person can with honesty claim such a status. But it is a constant human condition that we all aspire to be something better. America, despite a primary impulse towards individual fulfillment and its impossibly complex mix of cultures, often demands of its people higher standards in these things than many other societies. During the presidential campaign it was alleged that Obama made a large investment in a biotech company researching among other things a drug to treat Avian Flu just as he was pushing, as a Senator, for federal funding to battle the disease. By the standards of some cultures such actions would be considered a perk, legitimately claimed by a holder of power. Although the company concerned was one among several in this area of research, and the investment was made by a blind trust he had created, that sloppy act could have become a very serious error for the Presidential hopeful.

Obama the liberal was elected as an advocate for change. But in a society so hugely successful in many things, an American President must ponder deep before tampering with a system which defines the country, creating such enormous wealth as well as opportunities. The mantle is heavy and the task impossibly complex. And the US Presidency is a position of such power today that the holder if he chooses could make the lives of all humans on this planet a little better or if such a need arises ensure the total annihilation of all life on earth, surely close enough to the definition of God in any book.

It is to this office that Barrack Obama, born to an African father and an American mother, has now been elected. Freedom and liberty are surely not just clauses in a Constitution. To have any meaning they must live in the hearts and minds of the people. By choosing Obama as their number one citizen the American people have once again demonstrated how alive the ideals of freedom, liberty and equality are deep inside them. Obama at 47 years claims a political career of only four years. America would not be what it is if they were in the habit of habitually electing the village headman to the Senate and upon his death send his scion to Washington.

America also would not be what it is without the confluence of so many diverse human categories. Ethnically it represents one of the most complex mixes, unprecedented in human history. Throughout its relatively short history, America's doors have been open to successive waves of harried, bedraggled immigrants determined to start a new life. Europeans came there more often than not to escape religious persecutions and of course the poverty back home.

America one time had a strong slave owning culture which was eventually dismantled by its own people waging a bloody war against their own compatriots to win emancipation for the slaves. Most of these slaves stayed on in the land of their former enslavement eventually becoming the most prosperous black community in the world.

Later, thousands of Chinese went to work as labourers in the fast expanding American West, today's Chinatowns are a part of that heritage. Now there are millions of Hispanics and other races enjoying the largess of this incredible country. Even from little Sri Lanka thousands have found in that country a life style unthinkable here. Several among them are children of now aging leftists, once sworn ideological enemies of what America stands for.

America may have been built by its men of industry, hard driving and conservative. But to the larger humanity, blessed far less, the manifestation of its greatness lies in its generosity of spirit, enlightened liberalism and admirable intellectual breath.

Wherever disaster strikes on the globe threatening lives and property mass scale, we see America rushing to the rescue with all their might. While as a country it is a large scale aid giver American people's collective and individual assistance to the world in the form of various charities are truly astounding. Two of its richest, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have pledged virtually all their massive wealth to public causes, primarily outside of America.

To the intellectual and social advancement of mankind America's contribution is equally impressive. From the sciences, technology, arts to sports its predominance is unrivalled. The lives of most of us have been improved as a result of advances in these areas, substantially initiated in America. The intellectual stature of some of its universities is a compliment to the capabilities of the human mind.

While it is understandably proud of its history, during a good part of which it has been the most powerful country in the world, America's attitude is that the future would be even better. All fixed, fast frozen ideas and concepts from the old world are thrown into the melting pot to be scrutinised, analysed and often thrown out.

IT is no surprise that the great American adventure and the incessant debate never end. Is there a god? Should religion be taught in schools? When does a fetus become a life? What standards, even in their private life, do we expect of holders of public office? The debate goes on. The search never ends.

It will however be unrealistic to conceive of a complex powerful nation such as America as a perfect system capable of being all things to all people.

While the spirit of the nation is large America's image is often harmed by the perception of its global role evidently dictated by a few arrogant and overzealous administrators. It is particularly in the handling of foreign affairs that we observe America's limitations and imperfections.

History is replete with instances where great powers are drawn into foreign quagmires willy-nilly, which eventually saps its strengths and energies. America, riled by the terrorist attacks of 9/11, declared war on all shades of Islamic extremism, the evident perpetrators of those acts. Its foreign policy since the Second World War, particularly in respect of the newly created State of Israel and consequently the rest of the Middle East, has led America to a position of being perceived as an adversary, if not by all, at least by a substantial segment of the Islamic world. America reacted strongly to the blatant act of terrorism and began a gigantic military sweep in the Middle East to get at their enemy, who are mainly shadowy figures apparently hiding in busy bazaars and remote hamlets. Basically American soldiers overran Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet although deeply wounded, the enemy remains elusive. Recently we have seen America unleashing missile attacks against suspected terrorist targets in Pakistan and Syria, countries with which it seemingly maintains cordial relations.

For countries like Sri Lanka, embroiled in a decisive battle with a terrorist group, the unrelenting determination of the super power to hunt down its terrorist enemies including even those remotely connected to the extremist movement, runs counter to America's often paternalistic position vis-a-vis our own troubles. Here American representatives declare the need for a negotiated settlement with an armed LTTE, credited with thousands of terrible aggravations, the assassinations of an elected President of this country as well as a former Prime Minister of India, an urging tantamount to rewarding terrorism and legitimising its methods.

It is obvious that Sri Lanka and her troubles are too trivial to engage the minds of the best and the brightest in an American administration.

Inevitably the low level functionaries handling these matters, carried away by the aura of representing a super power in a tiny country, soon become lecturing busybodies among a native population they generally perceive as Uncle Toms. In their way of thinking all coloured men are indulging in corrupt practices, and when not so occupied, are busy violating human rights of others. So why not give into the LTTE; a purveyor of terrorism, suicide bombings, child soldiers, smuggling, black money transactions and an utterly totalitarian organisation? In fact by this cavalier attitude they do a great disservice to the American people.

It is said that one of the political gifts of Obama is the ability to see the world through others' eyes, a unique ability when many who speak in the name of his country are busy telling the world to see things through theirs'. By electing Barrack Obama as President, America has earned itself an opportunity to do things differently, rekindle hope in the world, restore confidence in our future and regain its greatness.