I have reviewed the new American administration's policies a hundred days after Barack Obama's entry to the White House, and then six months after. I was supposed to evaluate it again a year later, but I decided that there's no need to wait. This is because after eight bleak years of George W. Bush's tenure as President, there is a new American President that the whole world, including Arabs and Muslims, can trust and be confident of his abilities and good intentions. Recall that while Richard Nixon was a capable president, he was evil and has fallen victim to his own evil work. On the other hand, George W. Bush was not evil, but was rather ignorant and dim-witted, and allowed an evil gang to govern in his name, wreaking havoc upon the world. Then, a President who neither deceives nor can be deceived - or as Imam Ali said: I'm not malicious and the malicious cannot deceive me – finally came to power. Today, I feel comfortable in dealing with the Obama administration, and I can choose to support its positions and decisions or to oppose them. In addition, I expect and hope for this administration to succeed, while being confident that this would not be at our own expense. In other words, there is a cloud that has now dissipated in what pertains to how I deal with U.S. policy, after I had utterly opposed all members of the Bush administration. I did so knowing that there can be no hope with them, and that both their successes and failures will ultimately be at our own expense and that it would be us who will pay the price, and we have. In the eight years of the Bush administration, I took the calculated decision of keeping an open line of communication with the State Department, because I always need information from the ambassadors and other envoys in the department. I was helped in this regard by the fact that both Secretaries of State Colin Powell - despite his speech at the United Nations on the eve of the invasion of Iraq - and Condoleezza Rice- in spite of her close allegiance to the President- were African American: Call me a reverse racist, but I prefer African Americans over whites, and my experience with them, especially the African American members of Congress, has always proven to me that they are more sympathetic to Arabs than any other ethnic group in America. Now, there is an African American President in the White House. Even if I were to pretend to be colour-blind in order to avoid being called a racist, his speech in Cairo is a sufficient example for me to judge the President's intentions in offering cooperation and peace to Arabs and Muslims in the first six months of his term. There is also our right to expect him to start carrying out this new policy in the next six months, and up until the end of his first term. While I am talking about Arabs and Muslims because I am one of them, my opinion concerning Obama is almost the same as that of the whole world. Mr. Obama, according to the poll conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, enjoys greater confidence among Germans than does Chancellor Angela Merkel, and among the French than President Nicolas Sarkozy. All the above does not mean that I expect the American president to succeed in solving all the problems facing his country and the world; he is not a wizard, and there is no magic wand in his hands. Also, there are those forces working against him within the American political establishment, as proven by the recent debacle of the healthcare plan. In fact, some members of the Congress represent corporate interests, such as those of health insurance companies, more than they represent citizens and their own constituencies. As such, they had thwarted the efforts led by Hillary Clinton and her husband in 1993 and 1994, and might very well do the same against Obama's efforts, when they come back from their summer recess. Half a century ago or so, Dwight Eisenhower warned the Americans of the industrial-military complex, to which I want to add a warning about the Israeli lobby. We have seen many examples of this lobby's activities and how American Jews support Israel, sometimes at the expense of their own country, which does not need to be explained further here. In any case, the above is perhaps why President Obama resorted to the so-called “signing statements” in objection to some of the bills ratified by the Congress. Conversely, this has led his opponents from both the right and left, especially the Likudniks and the Israeli lobby, to claim that Obama's tenure is nothing but a third term for George W. Bush. This claim, however, is impossible, because the former president unbeknownstly handed over his office to a gang of war that included those want to establish an American empire, and others who place Israel's interest above those of America itself. If the new president does not confront the remnants of this gang, then they might very well attempt to harm his efforts. If the above is not enough, we find that while Obama does have a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, they do not necessarily support him should U.S. interests not match with the interests of Israel or with those of the industrial-military complex. In fact, the House and Senate are both more Israeli than the Israeli Knesset itself, and their record offers enough proof to my claim. Then there are the other pressure groups and the need of each runner for Congress for money, the presence or absence of which being the key to success or failure. Nevertheless, Obama is still trying, and while George W. Bush used to turn off the lights at ten p.m. in the White House, and after giving himself many leaves at the family home on the beach or at his ranch in Texas, there is a President who works until after midnight, with the least amount of leave days so far. Since 20/1/2009, Obama has visited Baghdad, which he also visited as a presidential candidate a year before, and once before that as well. He also visited Egypt, Turkey and Ghana, and spent a week in Europe, attending the G20 summit, the G8 summit, the NATO summit and the European Union summit. He also visited Moscow, and met with the Pope in Rome; his meeting with the latter was positive, and anyone whom he did not visit was received in the White House such as the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and even China and others. Also, while I am writing this article, President Mubarak is visiting Obama, after he had pulled out from the Sharm el-Sheikh summit before George W. Bush's speech. In any case, I will return to this subject in two days.
