The Party of “NO”?
It’s just over a year since President Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential elections. A full year, you would assume, for the Republican Party to lick its wounds, put country first and help the new president get the country up and running as it tries to recover from what many experts have dubbed the worst recession in many decades. On the contrary and living up to the literal meaning of being conservative – backward, ignorant, short-sighted, avowedly opposed to anything progressive, key members of the party have done everything they can to sabotage the programs of the president. The lowest of these pathetic unpatriotic acts were exposed when some Republican Party heavy-weights like Newt Gingrich were shown celebrating the elimination of Chicago from the list of countries vying to host the next Olympics. As if the Olympics was only going to benefit the city of Chicago! Across the country, we saw protests about “death panels” and granny-killing. Guns were brought to Obama appearances. A pastor (believe it or not) in Arizona said he was praying for Obama to die. Of course, we are all very familiar by now with Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-S.C.) appalling display on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives when he shouted at the president from his fifth-row seat: “You lie!” For “ordinary” Americans who are egging on these Republican Party leaders in their campaign to “make sure Obama fails”, we should point out that no matter what happens, Obama will never want for health care, security, wealth and fame. If health care reform fails, we, the people are the ones who will die because we could not afford to go the hospital and most like have financial difficulties because we could not afford the huge bills that are bound to come after you get out of the hospital. His name is already in the history books as the President of the United States of America. He is bound to make a lot of money even if he did not get re-elected because there will be the usual books, speeches and consulting engagements former presidents have access to. If he is not allowed to handle the war in Afghanistan in a pragmatic manner that will lead to some form of acceptable resolution, thousands of American soldiers will die. I have seen Americans, at the prompting of Republican Party leaders, protesting with pictures of Obama as Hitler. My question to theses Americans is, “What would be your reaction if you saw people in other countries with the picture you are holding of your president portrayed as Adolf Hitler accompanied with derogatory remarks? If I were to take a guess, you will most likely want to go kick their ass! The world is watching. For a country that claims to be civilized, a lot of our actions make me wonder. As the president aptly put it: When “we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter, we don’t merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves.”
There is also the concerted efforts to derail the much-needed healthcare reforms. The disturbing aspect of this that while members of the Republican Party are quick to say “No” to anything that has Obama attached to it, they are very shallow when it comes to proposing an alternative.
The latest is the resort to calling the president “weak”, “indecisive”, “jeopardizing national security” etc. because unlike the Republicans and particularly unlike former president George W. Bush, Obama has refused to rush to judgment in committing the lives of thousands of young Americans to a war we should not be fighting in the first place. Agreed, political reality has forced the president to reassess some of his earlier proclamations in terms of national policy. But that is the sign of a good leader and commander. When the reality of battle hits and things are not going well, you go back to the drawing board and re-strategize with the goal of inflicting the maximum casualty on the enemy while minimizing your losses.