Barack Obama - 44th President of the USA

Today at 12 o'clock noon local time (5 p.m. GMT) Barack Hussein Obama stood on the steps of the Capitol in Washington D.C. and was sworn in as the 44th President of the USA. According to media reports the inauguration ceremony and the related parades and celebrations brought a record crowd of more than 3 million people (1% of the entire US population) out onto the streets and boulevards of the US capital, where they were standing for up to eight hours, despite a cold wind a temperatures well below zero Celsius.

This is a happy day for the USA, as it ends the eight terrible years of the Bush administration with its massive wave of crimes, war crimes and breaches of human rights and international law.
George W. Bush, the uneducated savage war lord, former alcoholic and right-wing 'Christian' fundamentalist, walks away from all the harm and damage he has done to his own country and to many others around the world. He will spend the rest of his life in great luxury and he will never be held responsible for his unspeakable acts of crime, war, terror and torture.

And he settles the new administration of President Obama not only with two illegal wars in Asia, but also with the worst economic and financial crisis in modern history, perhaps only matched by the disastrous period of the early 1930s.

Most media declare that Barack Obama is "the first black US President", which is not correct. He might have a darker skin than many of the journalists, but Obama is not 'black', but of mixed race. Calling him an African-American is acceptable, as his father was an African from Kenya, while his mother was a white American from the Mid-West.

But race is not the issue here and has played no significant role in Barack Obama's campaign. He is in fact the first non-white US politician who built his career on facts and achievements alone, without playing the race card. This, in my opinion, is one of the reasons for his electoral success and for his universal appeal to people from all ethnic groups and walks of life.

On this important day, as his presidency begins, I wish Barack Obama the best of luck and much success in his new and difficult office. I am confident that he will make a great difference to the USA and her people. And if he is given enough time and support, he might even do additional good for the rest of the world.
But one should be realistic and not expect the impossible. Despite all the public hype and media circus Mr. Obama is not the Messiah. He is just a human being, like you are and I am.
He is highly intelligent, very well educated, eloquent, courageous and sensible, and all this will be of great help to him and his administration. But to solve the massive problems his criminal and imbecile predecessor has left behind, he will also need a lot of time, even more money and a real large portion of good luck.

Let us hope that the world will be a better place under President Obama, and that he can heal at least some of the wounds caused by the Bush administration. But whatever he does, even in two periods as President (eight years) he will never be able to restore all the confidence, credit and good will the USA lost under George W. Bush.
More than 35 years after abandoning South-Vietnam the USA are still not trusted in South East Asia, and they won't be for at least another century. The Germans are still blamed for Adolf Hitler, 64 years after he died and the Second World War ended.

Some may see it as unfair, and perhaps it is. But major diplomatic mistakes, political blunders and especially cruel and illegal wars of aggression have the habit of hanging over nations for a very long time, for many decades and even centuries. This is the legacy the Bush clan leaves to Barack Obama and the whole USA.

Nevertheless, I have to admit that for the first time in eight years I am looking West with some degree of hope and positive expectation. But it is very early days yet, and only time will tell if we can even contemplate to trust the USA again in future. As I have followed the political career of Barack Obama throughout the whole of 2008 - and predicted his election more than a year ago - I will keep an eye on his policies and decisions as President. And if you keep reading this weblog, you will stay well informed about him.

The Emerald Islander

P.S. To answer a query I received earlier today, let me point out that Barack Obama is the 44th President of the USA, but only the 43rd man to hold the office. The reason for this discrepancy in numbers is simple: Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, was elected President twice, but not in consecutive terms. Thus he is listed as the 22nd President (1885-1889) and as the 24th President (1893-1897), even though he is the same person.