NOTHING SEEMS to be going right for United States President Barack Obama. He must by now have come to the stark reality of the Shakespearean aphorism that “all things that are; are with more spirit chased than enjoyed”.
His presidency is taking a battering from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which is proving to be a monumental ecological disaster and quite frankly is going to affect his political stakes and define his electoral future henceforth.
As the damaged British Petroleum (BP) oil well continues to spew millions of gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico, the immediate challenge is how to mitigate an ongoing environmental catastrophe. One can only hope that the spill will be contained soon, and that the ever-darkening worst-case scenarios will not materialise.
There is no immediate danger for the Caribbean, although Cuba could be affected, depending on the currents. The disaster, however, poses a much deeper challenge to how modern societies deal with regulating complex technologies used in drilling offshore.
Barbados has recently embarked on a process of tendering for offshore exploration and though the process seems to be at a standstill, the accelerating speed of innovation seems to be outstripping government regulators’ capacity to deal with risks, much less anticipate them.
The oil spill off the south coast of the United States now reaches practically all the way to the White House – and Mr Obama is literally being soiled by it.
“Plug the damn hole,” the Washington Post reported he told aides in frustration. The frustration is evident. Mr Obama is leading two wars and pushing reforms ranging from health care to finance. But “that hole” is becoming his biggest immediate problem, an ongoing environmental disaster that he has been unable to contain.
The reality is that despite the might and power of the United States, the world is seeing how shockingly helpless it is in the face of the many challenges confronting it.
Whether it is the Middle East, the Korean Peninsula or the Taliban in Afghanistan, or a simple oil leak, it is the simple solution that escapes it.
This development must be a huge embarrassment for President Obama coming so soon on the heels of his recent proposal – admittedly under pressure from the Republican opposition – to expand offshore oil drilling greatly just before the BP catastrophe struck.
As if to rub salt in Mr Obama’s wounds, Israel on Monday detained more than 600 activists after a deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in international waters, an illegality that prompted outrage worldwide and renewed calls for Israel to end its blockade against Gaza.
Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reacted angrily to the attack on the Turkish ship, which took the lives of four Turkish citizens. As expected, the United Nations Security Council did not condemn the action, but merely released a tepid statement asking Israel to release its prisoners. Such duplicity!
