Obama and Africa
Gib at Crosblog writes about some of Mugabe’s latest activities, and then talks about how Obama as President might be able to effect some change:
Sen. Obama is a superstar in Africa, and should he become President, his popularity in Africa will continue to skyrocket, and his first official visit to the continent will be huge. I wonder what effect it would have if he, while speaking to a stadium full of thousands of people, in a speech broadcast worldwide, called out dictators like Mugabe, Omar Al-Bashir of the Sudan, and lesser known but nearly as bad apples such as Eritrea’s Isayas Afewerki or Equitorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema, and told them, and more importantly, told Africans and African leaders in no uncertain terms that they were hurting their nations and their continent, and that it was past time for them to go. Obama’s used strong words when speaking about Mugabe before, but speaking as the President would go a lot farther than speaking as a Senator from Illinois.
I am far from an Obama partisan, but I do try to think of all the sides of an issue, and this is something that I haven’t really considered before. I also very interested in seeing Africa improve itself, but have been quite discouraged about what we can do to help until African nations make internal reforms.
Gib’s point about what Obama could do is quite valid, and something to seriously consider. How active he would be in this area is harder to determine of course, but it is something to weigh in on when thinking about his candidacy. I expect that Obama would be much weaker then Bush in using hard power to promote democracy, but he would probably be able to muster quite a bit of soft power, and with the exception of continuing efforts to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan, it is probably time for us to focus on soft power for a while.
The downside in all of this is that I am not sure Obama’s economic vision for the U.S., and by extension his vision for the developing world, is even close to the right way to go.
The downside in all of this is that I am not sure Obama’s economic vision for the U.S., and by extension his vision for the developing world, is even close to the right way to go.
I’m actually pretty sure it’s not the right way to go. America will be stronger economically with McCain in charge - of this I have little doubt. That being said, should he win, Obama will take office with greater power to affect global change just by giving the right speech in the right place - to get rid of a dictator, McCain will probably have to bomb or invade someone.
And since America can certainly survive anything Obama can do, to me at least, the prospect of freeing Zimbabwe (which almost certainly cannot survive four more years of Mugabe and his goon squad) and maybe others would be enough to make the higher taxes and the idiot left-wing law professors on the courts bearable. In four years, we’ll have the chance to make Bobby Jindal President and let him fix the really stupid stuff.