One year on from an American ecstasy

An aircraft carrier, two vast amphibious surface ships, 2,000 US Marines and a myriad of medical staff and supplies are heading head for Haiti – at the personal dispatch of President Obama.

It’s not a bad moment to take stock of the first black man to sit on the power side of the desk in White House oval office. Give or take a day or two, it is a year on from the day Americas first black president took office.

The instant gesture by Obama in seizing control of the rescue of Haiti’s earthquake stricken world is perhaps more the Obama that people who had hope, hoped for. Rescuing Haiti is at least a military operation that Mr Obama did not inherit and does not at least involve live rounds.

One year on, the elation may have cooled but the memory has not dimmed. The hopes were high, some are still, others have been stilled, and still others never were.

Surprisingly, perhaps, Obama shows little sign of having changed. His opening efforts promised the closure of the world’s most notorious prison – Guantanamo. His “open hand of friendship” to Iran never completely closed despite the efforts of the Iranian authorities to get it to do so. And his Cairo speech offered respect and friendship to the nations of Islam.

But if Obama has not changed, neither has America. Guantanamo remains open, because those who set it up continue to render it hard to close. The numbers are down to 198 prisoners – more than 90 of them Yemeni.

The evidence is that the US “system” is in no hurry to fulfil the president’s wish. The promised health care bill is making its battered and bruised way through congress. America’s fear of “the state” continues to ride rampant.

Despite the fleet headed for Haiti within hours of the earthquake, maybe we are seeing Obama involuntarily defining the limits of power.

The wars continue. Yet despite the planned Afghan surge, Obama’s stance is still more for exit than for entry. Again, the American way is hard to throw into reverse. Despite emergence of the new “terror threat” from Yemen, no new US invasions appear to be on the horizon.

It’s not an exciting list. But Obama remains excitingly different from anything that has gone before in that office. The danger remains that over time he will be subsumed into the “American Way”.

We had a glimpse of it in his arrogant performance at the climate change conference in Copenhagen (See Snowblog at the time). Yet, fingers crossed, I would argue “hope” is still just about alive.