I got back from town today and switched on the TV News and thought that Israel had launched another strike on Gaza. As I watched the images flooding the screen of broken buildings and dust covered broken bodies, my heart sank as I imagined yet another IDF massacre was underway. The screen panned around buildings and shops flattened in what looked like an aerial attack. As I put my bag down and settled in the chair to watch the ‘Breaking News' cut in and suddenly the cameras switched to the White House and President Obama walking to the podium and getting ready to make his public statement. But my head just couldn't get round those first few seconds because as he prepared to speak, I was thinking to myself? What has happened? What magical thing has happened now to make the President of the United States issue a statement now about the Gazans? Why now and not back during his first days in office just after the last war. Then the fog cleared and the mystery was solved. There was I thinking it was Gaza under attack, and it was actually an earthquake in Haiti. I turned up the volume to listen as he pledged complete support, immediate rescue operations, telephone inquiry lines to be set up and how he felt pity for the Haitians living in the US who were worried about relatives in Port Au Prince who could not be contacted. How he would send aid and supplies and 3 separate teams of rescue workers from 3 different states to help dig out the dead and injured from the rubble. How this was a humanitarian crisis and he would be swift to offer any assistance required. It's funny because I had such high hopes when Obama took office. I thought that now we have a man of vision, a leader the world needs right now, someone who will go down in history as a peacemaker and statesman, another Martin Luther King. What we have discovered after one year in office is he is a man of divided loyalties, a weak and lame duck president. A man who divides his humanitarian assistance and help to who he decides are the needy and worthy. A Man who decides to spare no expense to send aid and rescue to Haitians in their hour of need but spares not one moment to stop or condemn the attacks on Gazans. This is a president who will go down in history as a man who ignored the dead and injured lying under the rubble of Israeli attacks. Of women and children massacred because they want their land back, their homes back. This is a man who sees a Haitian child through different eyes to a Gazan child. This is a man who could have made a difference but missed the opportunity because a Gazan child's blood is not as precious as his own childrens'. My heart weeps for the people of Port au Prince today, just as it still does for the people of Gaza in their catastrophe. Me, I make no distinction between what colour or religion a child is if it has a building come down on it . Obviously Mr President does, and that sadly is the state of our world today, and the calibre of it's leaders. BM
