INTRODUCTION A raging fever of fear rules the most advanced Nations in the World today. Perhaps, but for this fear, a political revolution would still be in convenient abeyance or suffer indefinite postponement. The civilized World is in unbelievable state of receivership. Even the Banks that bankrolled the fun and good times are themselves in the red as the books have become impossible to balance. It is the uncertainty of the consequences of the economic state of World democracy that fear now rules the World. This fear is not necessarily undesirable.
INTRODUCTION A raging fever of fear rules the most advanced Nations in the World today. Perhaps, but for this fear, a political revolution would still be in convenient abeyance or suffer indefinite postponement. The civilized World is in unbelievable state of receivership. Even the Banks that bankrolled the fun and good times are themselves in the red as the books have become impossible to balance. It is the uncertainty of the consequences of the economic state of World democracy that fear now rules the World. This fear is not necessarily undesirable. But for this fear, the reckless profligacy of unchecked credit and perpetual spending would be rolling without let.
Fear is like pain felt in anticipation. And like pain, the need for response and remedy is urgent. One solution America has come up with is the election of a hybrid product of African and American heritage into the white House. You can now see why the World is in an unusual state of celebration. That the barriers have come crashing like the Berlin walls. And the World feels free of its cruel past all of a sudden. But how they got the World into debilitating bankruptcy is what these leaders are yet to explain. And why usually noisy political opposition failed to complain early is yet a nagging mystery. But in all these, there exists a silver lining embedded in a hidden corner which must not be missed. The little and large lessons of this mess must be clearly understood by all if we are to avoid future panic.
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GEORGE WALKER BUSH JUNIOR AND THE WORLD HE IS LIVING BEHIND.
The very first important lesson to learn now and for all time is the significance of just one man to permanently affect the fortunes of the citizens of Nations great and small. Not just for his immediate generation but the future happiness of its unborn inheritors. What is also evident today is what we already learnt from history. That there may be no distinct borders to check the damage that one misfit can do to the World. How the state of his unclear mind can deprive future generations of peace and pleasure, consign many races to poverty and carelessly redesign the future direction of World progress in a cruel tattoo of madness. If we know anything in recent times, it is the singular lesson that just one critical person superintending the affairs of a significant Nation can offer unqualified prosperity to posterity while another in a questionable state of mental health can cause bloody wars and initiate mass plague across territories.
And we do not have to go beyond Washington today to demonstrate the meaning of what we have been saying. George Walker Bush junior, in just 8 years managed to destroy the prosperity of his Country, found creative ways to bring grim hatred to the giant of nations by inventing two humiliating wars within a space of twelve quick calendar months. In the process, he helped demolish the image of Ronald Reagan’s shinning city. The demystification of the awesome powers of the United States of America by rag wearing, knife wielding natives of Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan is what we are talking about. The thousands of lives of intimidating looking American soldiers smoked out of the bloody streets of Baghdad and the shame that goes with America running tucked tails behind its legs is what gets historians busy trying to figure out how American civilization got so weak to elect a leader whose brains have never proved exactly strong.
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HISTORY AND WHAT IT TELLS US OF LEADERS.
The truth of history cannot be questioned because the events captured by it have happened. So, without doubt, we are dealing with facts. There is no hypothesis or theory about what had gone down. From the blood soaked cities of Burma in World War II to the explosion rocked capital of Iraq in “Shock and Awe” Baghdad, the indelible bloody imprints of one wrong individual in far away Washington is clear. And history has chronicled the reputation of madness in the wrong decisions of leadership. From civilisations far gone into history, from Egypt and its Ramses, from Hanno and its Carthage, from Attila and the Huns, the power of a single man leading a strong Nation and his capacity to change the World and its culture has never ceased to amaze mankind. Today, with questionable leadership leading the most powerful Nuclear Nation, the uncertainty of the continued existence of civilization as we know it causes shivers around the globe. Until the last weeks of January next year.
Man holds in his unsure hands today, the power to destroy the World in minutes and cause a holocaust in seconds. But the flip side is the awesome strength of an advanced civilisation to create massive positive energy to advance the cause of good. This has been loudly demonstrated by this same Country, America, through technology, space travels, aeronautics, robotics and the amazing communication umbrella provided the wide World by the internet with satellites beaming messages clandestine and overt revealing secrets and connecting families across great spatial divides. Significantly therefore, the fate of our planet, whether we chose to admit it or not, lies most unfortunately in the hands of one significant mortal living right this minute in the white house.
The remnants of his dreams the night before, the unstable state of his mental health, the liquid weakness of his naughty intellect, the shrouded insecurity of his hungry ego, the instability of his swinging mood can combine to shape the destiny of an ignorant World. This, we must admit, is frightening in all its uncertainty. It took one German hot head Adolph Hitler to construct a military machine of awesome ingenuity to challenge the World to a duel. It took the cruel orientation of his sick mind to attempt to eradicate a whole race of Jews in a holocaust. And sadly, it also took more cruelty for the World to end this madness in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
AMERICA AND GREAT LEADERSHIP
But it also happens that the World was affected most positively by one great man, and I must add, many more before and after him, in America providing unqualified leadership. John F. Kennedy who put man on the moon. In so doing this , he announced the awesome technological superiority of his proud Country by projecting man’s power into outer space and helping to build mankind’s confidence in his ability to dream impossible dreams and actualise it within a space of less than one decade. President Kennedy was just a mortal in the White House like George Bush. They are two individuals connected by a common history who chose to see their office differently. See the difference just one man can make in the World.
OBASANJO IN HISTORY
Few men benefit from history even as it repeats itself with monotonous chronology. An insecure man in power is no longer in control of his faculties unless he is blessed with a gift of self detachment from the corrupting influence of sycophants hovering around his space. Power in a crude heart is a curse to a generation. In our own climes, here in Africa, we have lived through a rich history of heroism as demonstrated by the stubborn struggles of Nelson Mandela, unusual personal sacrifice of his freedom for a common ideal, strange readiness to surrender his precious life to a dream of uncertain future and willingness to suspend his thriving livelihood in legal practice, the welfare of his beautiful family and a young wife to make a better World. Politics, my friend, requires a mind dedicated to sacrifice of self and suspension of passion for sense. We are magnificently enriched by this unusual story of triumph and uncommon personal discipline and psychological detachment from the spoils of office later as President of a new South Africa.
By his own choice he voluntarily relinquished office within one term. What an uncommon act of gallantry in a hemisphere filled with compromising cowardice. On the other hand, the trauma of Obasanjo's missed chances, the strange run of luck to produce unusual opportunities for a man of crude conduct and even cruder upbringing is yet one of the wonders of a fortuitous World. But we witnessed the triumph of good over wrong through the drama of his monumental failures and finally the curse of his attempts to sacrifice democracy for personal ambition, and how this nakedly revealed the hidden truth of a mean mental state. We are rewarded however with the hard hammer of his humiliation and disgrace and the gradual restoration of our despair by slow but sure restoration of rigged positions. Oshiomole is now in. And many others must follow. These, in our contemporary time are events so historically enriching for academic dissertations in Political Science.
AFRICA AND ITS CURSE
We are also crushed by Mugabe's insane death wish for his lovely Country should anything threaten his inexplicable craving for elongation of office. Those unlucky to be around in the times of this man's struggle with Joshua Nkomo and Ndabaningi Sithole to usher in modern Zimbabwe from sin infested Rhodesia cannot but wonder the transformation of a just struggle to grinding madness because one man chose to spread a mattress on the wrong side of history. Today, a flourishing agricultural economy is in ruins replaced so sadly by barren near desert land. Mechanical implements of harvesting grains are now in various dilapidated states of rust. Leadership is what makes civilisations. It is what also wrecks Nations.
GEORGE WALKER BUSH JUNIOR” LEGACY
The diabolic achievements of George Bush are monumental. His legacy of recklessness is assured of generous chapters in history. He inherited the gigantic World image of America in the time of Clinton and demolished the historic edifice erected before his time. Irritated by what he believed as the pacifist administration of democrats under Clinton, he created two wars for America within a space of one year and has since made American’s realise how much the World hates arrogance. He has also quite honestly submitted a memo to Americans of their fallibility and need to think before they act. America today is a Country in doubt. Doubt of its place in the future of the World, doubt of the might of its military to raise the flag up around the World and doubt in the health of an economy that dictates to an obedient World. Ordinary rifle wielding naked cowherds of Afghanistan and street thugs of Baghdad in Iraq have succeeded in wasting the lives of promising young American soldiers who had earlier humiliated their Government and its stability. The huge financial war chest of a great nation is in pitiful deficit.
From a nation respected 8 years ago, he brought America flat on its back and the Country has deflated so rapidly to one of disrespect and disrepute. That is how far a leader can affect a nation in less than a decade. But we must be glad for George Walker Bush for teaching Americans some hard lessons. Lessons they have consumed, digested and have become empowered by. He taught the giant to respect the pygmy and stressed the hard lesson that brawn and physical might mean nothing against the determination of a threatened people, that colour and creed are mare expressions and that human beings differ very little in their feelings, pains, pleasures and aspirations for the good life. That good and bad is not domiciled exclusively in one race. Without the monumental failures of Bush there might have been no riotous revolution to bring Barak forward for the World to cheer. That is the legacy of George Walker Bush.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of SaharaReporters
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