Who Is This Man?

It is not self-abnegation but a social gesture of respect that U.S. President Barack Obama confers when he greets other world leaders. A slight, courteous inclination of his body which many who despise this gesture, consider to be a deferential bow. He offers a courtesy, and he does so out of an ineffable sense of self-confidence, not as a weak president. He is, in fact, imbued with an inflated sense of confidence, or ego. Manifesting itself when, believing he is right and his closest allies wrong, he does quite the opposite, by publicly shaming them.

His courtesies are extended to those in high office who are no friends of America, but rather political, social, cultural and trade opponents. He leaves those whose politics and social order reflects that of the United States - like India, Israel, Ukraine, Honduras - in bewildered abandonment, while seeking closer ties with countries like Pakistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia whose loathing of the United States is palpable. He has made overtures to the world of Islam, and made favourable inroads in their public and government opinion.

To the extent where Moammar Ghadafi of Libya lauds him as a son of Islam, a black Muslim leader whose imperative to seek closer ties with the Muslim world will bring peace. As soon as he rouses himself to sufficient authority over the government of Israel to bring to reality a new state of "Isratine", enveloping current Israel into a greater territory encompassing it and the Palestinian Territories where, presumably, Jews will live among Arabs on the usual sufferance.

“Now, ruling America is a black man from our continent,” exulted Moammar Ghadafi, “an African from Arab descent, from Muslim descent, and this is something we never imagined – that from Reagan we would get to Barakeh (Arabic for Barack) Obama.” He characterized President Obama's presence in the White House “a major historical gain.” Elaborating that the Arab world detests America, but there is a growing faith and attraction in Barack Obama.

President Obama is busy making a name for himself elsewhere, as well. He is an American, a black-American president, and one with a social conscience that has been put to the test to bring universal medical care to the sole country in the developed world that had none. He is also a social idealist in many other ways, and impractically, for a world leader - for the world leader, he is dedicated to the ideal of a nuclear-munitions-free world.

Clearly, no one has ever attempted to reason with Barack Obama that what humankind's curiosity along with science and technology has created, may never be un-created. That monstrous genie simply laughs when he is ordered to slip back into the burnished copper flask from whence he was rubbed into existence. Yet he has introduced the international community to his vision of diplomatic foreign policy. And the world is impressed.

Not so impressed, perhaps, Israel. Whom he has thrown to the wolves surrounding it, empowering them with his words of scorn and condemnation, to feel that they will re-inherit that which they will forever claim to be rightfully theirs. Relegating Israel to the back-room of potential doom, while he can look placidly on, recalling that this one-time friend and ally had been given more than sufficient time to adjust to the new reality, which it then spurned.

And of the world's current greatest threat to stability, in a nuclear-weapons-determined Iran whose deadline of compliance has long since passed, what? The sneers and jibes that Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and its President Ahamadinejad aim at him appear to bounce off this president's chivalrous coat of steel armour as he portends even greater sanctions, knowing full well that Chinese energy-need will never allow it.

A new rapprochement with Russia resulting in the START nuclear arms treaty cutting the arsenal of each by 30% is a step forward in both countries' reach toward non-proliferation. Both countries have been adept at holding back on the use of those weapons through perilously-dangerous times of suspicion and fear, although the U.S. has the distinction of twice unleashing that dread power on another country.

The United States still, and will always present itself as the fulcrum of freedom and democracy around which all other liberal democracies revolve. This is really business as usual for the United States; but with another flavour, a firmly socialist-oriented one, a version long despised and now deposed by Republican America, but there, in the White House, to do what it will for the time being.

This president has taken many steps that have been more emphatically different than those of his predecessors. Some may be viewed as laudable, others as distinctly regrettable. It remains to be seen - and in the quite near future - just how effectively he has managed the vital issues his country faces within itself, from its social structures to its unemployment, to its debt and deficit and financial institutions, to its relations abroad.

The country's ongoing involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, with Iran and North Korea, with Russia and with China, all represent world-affecting issues. We, the onlookers, can do nothing but wait and hope and witness.