A Historic Day

A truly historic day. The American people have spoken, and they demand change. And for the first time ever, an African American is elected president.

Not that I have any right to comment much seeing that I'm Malaysian, but I've been pretty sick and tired of how things are headed over here. The economy is collapsing (or some may say, has collapsed), young American men and women are dying in the Middle East, fighting a war they don't necessarily agree with, and in the process of hunting down 'insurgents' kill hundreds of innocents.

Collateral damage, they call it. Maybe it's acceptable for Bush and co. to have a few innocent women and children die in the war against terror, but imagine if you were on the other side of the fence. If you, an innocent farmer, comes home someday to find things left in a crater from a smart-bomb attack that some American had ordered from half a world away, your wife and 8 year old child's bodies buried somewhere in the rubble. Who are we to decide what is 'acceptable collateral damage'? Would the President allow for this if this was a mission on US soil? What if we were talking about his own family?

That's probably one thing I find it difficult to understand. What exactly is acceptable in war? Especially one that was started on the grounds of lies. True, Saddam was a tyrant, but to invade a country claiming to have evidence of weapons of mass destruction, only to reveal that this was all not real. What real benefit have the Iraqi people seen, I wonder? Especially if you were that poor farmer, totaly oblivious and uninvolved in all of this until someone bombed your home?

I can see why some people accuse Bush of having committed war crimes.

In the process, billions of dollars have been spent, billions more are being spent fueling the US war machine and the paranoia that attack is imminent. 'Kill them now or be killed".

While over here the working, middle class American struggles with paying for his mortgage and having foreclosures, not being able to afford his medications, paying exorbitant taxes. It irks me, as a physician, seeing every single day how my patients make a conscious decision to skip a few months' worth of their meds just because they cannot afford it because they are in the 'donut hole'. Every single day I have patients asking me if I have free samples I can give them. I had never seen anything like this before, such a medical tragedy, in my 6 years of practice, until now. And it's not like we're not paying taxes too.

Every year, my taxes cost more than a new Porsche Boxster. Where is all this money going?

Though I am not American, I must say I join the millions who are celebrating over this historic day. You kinda knew this was going to happen; you just pity McCain who had to be the Republican candidate after George W. Bush's catastrophic presidency. As they said on CNN just now, Bush is probably the worse ever US President.

I do catch myself wondering if the Malaysia will someday be matured enough to see past skin color and race and one day allow a person from a minority group to be Prime Minister? Then again, with idiots still considering us 3rd generation Malaysian Chinese as immigrants, I already know the answer to my question, sadly enough.

Only time will tell if Barack Obama will live up to his promises.