Ghassan Charbel
That was on October 26, 1967. The young pilot insisted on participating in a sensitive raid. Someone whispered in his ear that the mission was dangerous. He did not hesitate. It never occurred to him that this would be his last mission. Once he flew over Hanoi, the missiles were waiting for him. His plane was hit; he ejected and made a parachute landing into a lake. They pulled him out and beat him, adding serious wounds to the fractures he suffered in his landing. The captive pilot kept the secrets. He was subjected to rounds of torture. Then his captors discovered that the insolent captive officer was the son of Admiral Jack McCain who had refrained from writing to his son in captivity to prevent the "enemy" from using these letters for propaganda purposes. His wife Carol, meanwhile, never wrote that she was left handicapped by a terrible car accident.
Following the Paris agreements in 1973, the Vietnamese would release John McCain. His hair grayed prematurely and the marks of that period would never leave his body. Two months later, President Richard Nixon would shake hands with the "hero" who entered the White House on crutches in front of the cameras. Perhaps it was that specific moment that inflamed his presidential dream. As John McCain's plane went down, Barack Obama was only a six-year old trying to play like other children. There was nothing in his family background that would qualify him or help him commit the dream of reaching the White House. His white American mother was fighting the difficult battle for bread since his Muslim Kenyan immigrant father had broken up with his wife four years earlier and returned to his homeland. Barack's mother would marry an Indonesian student who would send her little one to an Islamic school in Jakarta then to a Christian school before Barack's return to America where he grew in the custody of his American grandfather.
The resident of the global village can ignore elections in this or that country. He has the right to forget the names of many presidents. One, however, cannot ignore the names of contenders in the American presidential race. The race concerns all the residents of the village without exception, including those who hate the occupier of the Oval Office, regardless of his name or politics. The American president is an issue that concerns the entire world. His choices impact every family regardless of the colors of its flag or the nature of the regime where it lives. His choices impact the security and stability of the world, the greenback, oil prices, the flow of goods, global warming, and gas emissions.
Though justified, the Arab's hatred of the US policy in the Arab-Israeli conflict does not absolve us from following the developments in Washington, nor does the Arab's condemnation of the American invasion of Iraq. In fact, the damage we bear as a result of the continued American bias towards Israel and of the American adventure in Iraq should constitute additional reasons to dig deeper into the histories of McCain and Obama, not to wonder about the future of either, but rather, about the future of our countries in the light of the choices made by these two men.
The Arab wishes that he could ignore the American elections and their outcomes. He wishes if Arabs controlled the decision in making their own present and future, if the Arab League was capable of deterring disasters or addressing them immediately. Had this been the status of the Arab League, the current situation in Iraq would not have been; the same goes for Lebanon, Somalia and Sudan. Ultimately, the capability of the Arab League is the summation of the capabilities put by the Arabs at its disposal and which evidently amounts to very little.
The Arab has to include the American elections in his daily schedule. The truth is that the people of the entire region await the outcomes. The new master of the White House will decide the date of the US withdrawal from Iraq. He will also decide whether he will sponsor direct negotiations between Syria and Israel. Additionally, he will decide the future of the promises regarding the establishment of a Palestinian State. He will also determine the form of dealing with Iran's regional and nuclear ambitions. These files concern the security, stability and the size of roles in the region. Hence, the Middle East, like other world regions, is sitting in front of the screen waiting for the name of the key holder. There goes Obama on a tour to learn how to deal with the concerns of the world, while McCain is trying to suggest that running the world demands a man with a history, a man who has experienced wars and their sorrows.
* Published in the London-based DAR AL-HAYAT on July 21, 2008.
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