Obama’s manhood

When I lived in mainland United States, around all sides of Chicago (Westside, Southside and Uptown), North Carolina, Texas, and Kentucky, and transient in many cities including south L.A. and towns in the Jersey side of Manhattan, the surest way to get to a black man’s goat is to suggest that he has manhood problems.
Sociologically, manhood problems in the U.S. South have been aired against many male Americans of African descent because of the high incidence of black females living alone and dependent on public social nets, abandoned by the black fathers of their children, we are told.

That charge against lack of “manhood” was recently used by a NY Times columnist to characterize Obama’s foreign policy “indecisiveness” in the Middle East. We will dismiss the columnist’s deliberate choice of a previously racist symbol since we knew him to be a rabid cheerleader for the Iraq war and had been called by a colleague in the trade as a “bully.” Nor will we consider the comment as the opposite of being manly in the sissified manner of the Brit gentleman out of Eton; not even the “unmanly” way Georgie Bush was accused when he used childhood language to rationalize the Iraq invasion, as against Saddam “trying to kill my Daddy.”

“Indecisiveness” is the current word to malign leaders who do not draw their six-shooters from the hip and ask questions later. In fact, the alleged Putin problem in Russia is a kneejerk response by many among the feds to anything Russian. Putin after 9/11 was a good friend of the U.S., even visiting Georgie in his Texas farm, but a week later was hanging on the foreign policy limb when the U.S. unilaterally invaded Iraq, thanks to Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the Armageddon crowd, who do not have “manhood” issues. (BTW, Condoleezza Rice could not erase the “masculine” charge against her even with pleasantly raised heels and creaseless skirts.)

In a recent live interview where Putin fielded questions from the audience and from other off-locations including Crimea, he was asked if he expects Obama to save him should he find himself drowning and needing assistance. Putin said: “Obama is a good and decent man. Yes.” The men have many disagreements, and though they do not look like they warmly talk to each other in public, there does not seem to be any fundamental trust issues. Racism is not unknown in the Kremlin, the Patrice Lumumba U notwithstanding. The neocon imperialistic perspective dominates Obama’s advisers, though the President as a congressman was one of three U.S. Congress persons who opposed the Iraq invasion. Neither can erase their liability with a magic wand.

The decisiveness call is ladled on the MH370 missing flight as someone intentionally veered the flight elsewhere from its designated path, costing the world numerous search materials and efforts, now more than a month later, still not having any shred of tangible result.

On the other hand, indecisiveness is labeled on the crew of the Jeju ferry and the Jindo rescue station office when the interisland ferry sunk off the southern tip of the Korean peninsula. The crew could have initiated evacuation procedures earlier, and the ship’s captain leaving the steering of the wheel to an inexperienced young third mate is now considered in Seoul as “murderous.” Within an hour, the ferry became an upside-down tub! Jindo’s rescue response was confused as well.

A commentator pointed out that there were many ships in the neighborhood when the tipping incident occurred, and two of them could have easily sailed beside the ferry, threw chains underneath what was yet a sinking boat, and secured the same to their side to keep the ferry from sinking. A quick inventory of the ships in the channel at the time showed a number owned by, or, on lease to, oil companies with cargoes of the precious fluid they evidently did not wish to endanger. In the armchair quarterbacking after the incident that we all participate in, one wonders how different the casualty might have been, “if only…”

“Indecisiveness” works both ways, but many have chosen to engage the word in the service of the seemingly sociological therapy that the blame-game rhetoric provides.

U.S. “indecisiveness” began when older George Bush decided that Marine’s presence in Somalia was limited to humanitarian tasks. The military command resented that since their skill was sharper at the shooting range than at handling the shovel. That “manhood” problem is now leveled against Obama, especially now that the WH has delayed deciding on the Keystone XL pipeline. In Korea, he reminded Japan to face the atrocities it committed during WWII, gingerly, after he affirmed military treaty commitments on the Senkaku/Daoyu islands. Really indecisive! In one sense, he is reclaiming foreign policy post-WWII prerogative after we depended on G.I. Joe to determine the course for us all these years.

Know what? I am glad. Now, about my manhood…

Jaime Vergara previously taught at SVES in the CNMI. A peripatetic pedagogue, he last taught in China but makes Honolulu, Shenyang, and Saipan home. He can be reached at pinoypanda2031@aol.com.