The world still awaits a new us face

People hoping America under President Barack Obama will be more benign will perhaps be disappointed as the US continues to increase its war effort in Afghanistan with a high level of Afghan civilian casualties through airstrikes.

Although the US media was disturbed that 31 American deaths in Afghanistan last month were the deadliest since 2001, it pains foreign observers to see the reports dwell mostly on American deaths without those of Afghans.

USA Today reports on its front page last Monday that the Americans' combined death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan was inching close to 5,000. The story also told how two fallen soldiers killed in Afghanistan were transported back home and emotionally received by their families. Many poor young Americans end up in the war for lack of better employment opportunities- and such a point hasn't escaped the US media. The article had nothing on Afghan casualties, however.

The current edition of US Foreign Policy magazine, simply refers to Afghan president Hamid Karzai as "a puppet", "with little hope of coalescing the fractured political scene". The US government, the magazine notes, considered Karzai "the least-worst option", however.

America's imperial military adventures are continuing, despite the withdrawal from Iraq, as Afghanistan becomes the new battle front. Concerns by liberal scholars such as Princeton University Professor of Religion, Cornel West, expressed when President Bush was in power, still ring true today as the Defence budget was recently given a two-per-cent increase.

"In the wake of the shock and horror of those [9/11] attacks, many asked the question, why do they hate us? But the country failed to engage in a serious, sustained, deeply probing examination of the possible answers to that question," West, a noted social critic, wrote back in 2004 in his best selling book "Democracy Matters".

West, who opposes US militaristic adventures abroad also wondered: "Will the American empire go the way of the Leviathans of the past - the Roman, Ottoman, Soviet, and British empires? Can any empire resist the temptation to become drunk with the wine of world power or become intoxicated with the hubris and greed of imperial possibilities? Has not every major empire pursued quixotic dreams of global domination - of shaping the world in its image and for its interest - that resulted in internal decay and doom? Can we committed democrats avert this world-historical pattern and possible fate?"

Obama may be different from Bush. He may sound more multilateral and not cowboy-like. Yet it's doubtful if even the new US president has the vision or the ability to transform the self-perpetuating US imperial military and keep the US away from imperial war.

There was much hoopla about Obama's recent visit to Ghana. The US media pointed out that Ghana was chosen, instead of other larger and more influential African nations, due to its democratic record and success. The same can't be said of Obama's earlier visit to Egypt, in which he refrained from criticising the repressive regime in Cairo which continues to receive huge amount of US aid.

Some are urging Obama to quickly reclaim America's human rights' mantle and come up with a clear human rights agenda, albeit not in the manner of the Bush administration.

Human rights expert and author of "Closing Guantanamo: From Bumper Sticker to Blueprint," Sarah E Mendelson warned: "The Obama administration has not embarked on the sort of house-cleaning or shift in organisational culture [within the intelligence services] that it needs to grow a new cohort of intelligence officers. Some retired intelligence officers tell me they worry privately about the lasting effect of the post-9/11 culture on the agency they devoted their professional lives to."

Obama may be tied with attempts to pass a health care reform bill or solve the economic crisis back home. Elsewhere, however, the world is waiting to see if there will be any significant change in terms of US military adventures, human rights and the commitment to not behave hypocritically.

Muslims extremists will continue to hate and want to destroy America - but ordinary Muslims and non-Muslims worldwide expect more sincerity and less hypocrisy from America.

 Can Obama deliver?