The Age: I AM rubbing my eyes in disbelief and wonder. It can't be true that Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan, is the next president of the United States. But it is
true, exhilaratingly true. An unbelievable turnaround. I want to jump and dance and shout, as I did after voting for the first time in my native South Africa on April 27, 1994.
We owe our glorious victory over the awfulness of apartheid in South Africa in large part to the support we received from the international community, including the US, and we will always be deeply grateful. But for those of us who have looked to America for inspiration as we struggled for democracy and human rights, these past seven years have been lean ones.
The days of US as a bully are over:
To the outgoing Administration's record on torture we must add a string of other policies that have damaged the standing of the US in the world: its hostility to the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases; its refusal to assent to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, establishing the ICC's role in prosecuting war crimes; its restrictions on the use of US funding to fight AIDS; and the arrogant unilateralism it has employed in declaring to be enemies any countries it deemed "against us" because they were not "for us".
The Bush Administration has riled people everywhere. Its bully-boy attitude has sadly polarised our world.
Obama needs to be careful not to squander the good will:
In the midst of this celebration, however, a word of caution is appropriate. In the first days after September 11, the US had the world's sympathy, an unprecedented wave of it. Bush squandered it. Obama could squander the goodwill that his election has generated if he does not move quickly and decisively on the international front.
On human rights, Obama needs to signal the changes his administration will bring by speedily taking a few high-profile symbolic actions.
One might be to close that abomination, the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Another could be immediate replacement of guidelines on the treatment of detainees, thus putting the US back in the mainstream of international humanitarian law. Read the whole thing.
