Whilst there is a general and universal sense of euphoria following Barack Obama’s stunning electoral victory in the USA, a cursory glance at America’s history must surely dampen the expectations of a better world order.
Every single American President has invaded, occupied and plundered a foreign country, or committed a massacre of the innocent under the pretext of a "civilising mission" or providing aid to "the Other".
Even President-elect Obama admits that America has lost its moral standing world over. It has violated International Law and UN Resolutions with impunity, it supports tyrannical regimes and dictatorships on every continent, and supplies arms to countries to oppress and kill freedom fighters and opponents of Western-backed hegemonies.
Obama will have to reverse America’s sordid and tarnished reputation for the unjustified and illegal incarceration of the innocent in Guantanamo Bay, to halt rendition and torture, implement climate-change treaties, respect civil liberties, and revoke Bush’s right-wing neo-con agenda of world domination.
Obama’s ominous pronouncements of moving troops from Iraq to Afghanistan justifies the sceptism of a new, just, enlightened, less bloody, and more humane American foreign policy.
Notwithstanding his eloquence and charm, clichés and platitudes about hope and change and unity, it will require a fundamental and momentous change in US hubris to end the bombings, the invasions, the killings, the destruction, the coups, the occupations and the torture.
Obama has surrounded himself with the same, dangerous, war-mongering clique of past advisers, Brezinsky, Albright and Ross.
This bodes ill for the future.
