President Obama: Be Bold, Surprise the Nation

If all we have heard and read about President Obama's upcoming speech are correct, this might be another missed

opportunity in the boldness-for-real-change department. What we have read and heard so far seems to indicate that

the president and his team are opting for a stimulus package redux after the pattern of the first $800b package, which

Republicans and the Tea Party folks have successfully sold to the public as a total failure.

I hope that the president would surprise us by coming out with a program that directly and massively attacks the two critical problems at the roots of the recession: the mortgage crisis, which has evaporated billions of dollars of wealth

in the middle class, and the high unemployment numbers, which have not budged due to the fact that corporate

America is sitting on billions of dollars in cash instead of using it to hire people, who will become active consumers and producers once again, of new products and services.

There are two items that must be in the president's new initiatives:

(1) A program to mop up the mortgage mess, by putting aside several billion dollars for directly buying up mortgages at the value of homes in today's market and refinancing at current rates for 30 years. The program should be run through

Fannie Mae and the housing departments of the states and the cities. The homes should be sold back to the current home owners.

(2) A program to give businesses large and small an incentive to hire people. Reducing the payroll tax to close to zero for 10 years is the kind of a bold program that is needed.

The first program would breathe financial life into the middle class all over the country, which has been devastated with .

lost property values. The second program would finally give private industry the kind of long-term certitude they have been calling for, as for as a condition to start putting their huge cash reserves to work in the marketplace. Both

programs, if implemented will increase the likelihood of a second term for President Obama. The question is whether the Republicans will be willing to stop such programs through the legislative process, even though they are essential for

a quick economic recovery, just to deny the president a second term.

Fubara David-West.

On Buchanan's "Foolish and Unconstitutional War"

The current military action in Libya is technically speaking not a war. It is a political use of military force, to forestall an imminent humanitarian disaster, which might have had catastrophic consequences for the those in Arab countries, who are currently rising up to demand their political rights. In that respect, it is a classic case of what Bleckman and Kaplan (1978) define as a use of force for political, rather than martial purposes.

The multilateral use of military force in Libya is intended to send a message to the Libyan regime that it must change course, and not slaughter its own people, for rising up to demand their political rights. Unless the Qaddafi regime survives, to slaughter the civilians he was threatening to, this mission will be a resounding success. That is why President Obama is calling for Qaddafi's ouster.

Of course, it is also possible that a humbled Qaddafi will get the message, even if he survives. In that case, success might also be measured by the number of Libyan lives the international community, under a UN mandate and American and NATO leadership saves. It is quite baffling that some of the leaders in the Congress and the Senate will refuse to understand that this is a matter that implicates the national interests of the United States, both in terms of America's long-standing commitment to democratic transformations in autocratic states, and in terms of upholding certain international values regarding human rights and crimes against humanity.

There would have been no possible way for President Obama and the world community to explain satisfactorily, why they did not act to save those fighting for their political rights, in spite of the fact that the Qaddafi regime announced its plans to massacre them en masse.

Libya: Ensuring that Qaddafi does not succeed

The final outcome of this conflict should determine the kind of institutional and operational structures within the African Union, which will should be kept alive. The African Union and its member states, cannot stand by and do nothing to forcefully stop the slaughter of Africans by their supposed government.

President Jonathan in Nigeria should step out and lead the AU out of its inaction on this matter. If he has any vision for change, he should use it now to move African states to finally repudiate the idea that a government, in the name of state sovereignty, can commit crimes against its citizens and not be held accountable by the international community. This is a time for leadership.

As things stand, whether the Qaddafi regime succeeds in keeping its hold on power or not, after this crisis, its legitimacy will be in tatters, and it does not have the kind of power that a China has in international politics, to ward off such a devastating blow in the international community, as China was able to do after the Tienanmen Square massacre in 1989.

President Obama, whose performance on this matter has been outrageously weak, should immediately move towards leading NATO members, to recognizing the provisional authority that the Libyan opposition is putting together, and to start a massive effort to both arm the opposition and to ensure that the Qaddafi regime does not survive.

I thank you.

Fubara David-West.

African Union Must Work For Qaddafi's Ouster

The AU Must Work for Qaddafi's Ouster

The African Union should urgently bring a resolution to the UN Security Council, calling on member states of the United Nations, to take all necessary measures to end the reign of terror of Qaddafi in Libya. This must be done today.

Meanwhile, President Obama's administration in the United States should stop trying to walk a fine line, between diplomatic niceties and justified outrage at what is going on in Libya. It should immediately put in place the policies and the military means, to bring a quick and decisive end to the brutal regime of Qaddafi. There can be no normalcy, while the Qaddafi government survives with blood on its hands.

President Obama should come out in 48 hours, to announce a set of military measures aimed at bringing an end to the Qaddafi regime. Unmanned military assets, including cruse missiles and drones should be launched to destroy major support structures of the Qaddafi regime, and it should be done now, as a signal to the democratic fighters in Libya, that the United States supports their struggle.

I thank you.

Fubara David-West.



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Mubarak's Exit and the Next Challenge

There was just no way President Mubarak would have survived the raging popular anger all around. The next issue that any new political set up will have to confront is that of dealing with the basic demand for democratic reform, which fired up the popular uprising. It is possible that half a loaf will satisfy the activist leaders of the movement for reform, for now. However, it will be a huge mistake for the Egyptian military to assume that it does not need to accede to the demand for genuine democratic reform.

How does one rate President Obama's handling of the crisis? I think he handled it
quite well: an A-, will be the letter grade for his performance, especially if one goes by the assumption that he meant every word of his Cairo address, which prodded the Middle East towards embracing democratic reform. The message from President Obama's stance seems to be that the United States will stand up for democratic reforms in the Middle East, not through invasions, but by empowering the people of the region.

I thank you.

Fubara David-West.

Egypt and Obama's Riddle

Obama’s riddle: withdraw or keep military aid?

Until the United States discards the complexes it developed during the Cold War, which made it imperative for the country to search for and support individual rulers and political leaders as "allies", instead of the countries themselves, it will continue to stagger from one of these kinds of crises for its foreign policy, to another.

At the core of the notion of the individual ruler as an ally is a value system that is actually inimical to everything the United States should stand for: a value system that abjures popular sovereignty. Mubarak could not be an ally of the United States. Egypt has always been the real ally. American officials should always keep that in mind, if they are to effectively sell the message of popular sovereignty and American support for its underlining values to the world.

I thank you.

Fubara David-West.



--- On Sun, 1/30/11, Mr. Seyi Olu Awofeso wrote:
From: Mr. Seyi Olu Awofeso Subject: [NewnaijaPolitics] Obama’s riddle: withdraw or keep military aid?To: nigeria360@yahoogroups.com, NewnaijaPolitics@yahoogroups.comDate: Sunday, January 30, 2011, 2:57 PM

Obama’s riddle: withdraw or keep military aid?By Bill Emmott

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America must stay unequivocally on the side of freedom and reform. That means making a break with the past
It is a sobering thought, for any European or American prone to proselytising for democracy and human rights, that this month’s events in Tunisia, Egypt and other Arab dictatorships have had so little apparent connection to anything the West does or says. It is even a tad embarrassing that it is al-Jazeera, a broadcaster backed by the dictators of Qatar, that has been closed down first in Egypt and not the BBC or CNN.
That embarrassment is, however, as nothing compared with the fact that the rulers being overthrown were previously known as our “strategic allies”. We did little to bring them down — at least Hosni Mubarak has so far paid no heed to the phone calls he has had from Barack Obama and David Cameron, urging him to democratise Egypt — and yet so far we seem to have escaped direct blame for the rulers’ past sins. However, if that immunity from blame lasts it will be, shall we say, quite surprising.
Perhaps this is unfair. Perhaps WikiLeaks’ revelations of America’s honest view of the Tunisian dictator’s venality and incompetence have played a part; perhaps, a loyal US spokesman might now say, the tough speech in Doha, the Qatari capital, on January 13 by Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, warning Arab governments that unless they reformed they would be in danger, might have caused a few ripples; perhaps the European Union’s “Barcelona Process” of talks with the other side of the Mediterranean over trade and aid amid muffled mumbles about political development made some minute difference. We don’t and can’t know. Like Mr Mubarak right now, we need to be humble about our own powerlessness.
We shouldn’t, admittedly, be too self-deprecatory about this. Revolutions have always happened in unpredictable ways at unpredictable times, making it impossible to say with any certainty why the crowds formed and the necessary sense of collective bravery emerged in one country at one time and not in another country at another time.
Contagion helps, and so does the dissemination of information about how an overthrow was organised, whether by internal groups, by outside lobbies such as the International Centre on Non-Violent Conflict in New York, or just through Western media coverage.
The main tool by which we can promote democracy and other freedoms is by our own conduct and example. The trouble is, that also includes our conduct towards the dictators. Everyone knows about realpolitik, and most accept the need to do deals even with people we view with distaste, for ever risking accusations of double standards. But realpolitik leaves a trail that is likely to be exposed eventually: in a revolution, the archives are thrown open, previously silent people talk, and in an atmosphere of recrimination people look for culprits.
As that happens, in Egypt’s case especially, the West is at serious risk of becoming a target for militant groups, a focus for new sorts of nationalism even amid a move to democracy, if or (we hope) when the Mubarak regime does fall.